TV Fool report:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...e2cbce2acb6e02
I have a brand new db8e I'm planning on pointing due west. All the stations I'm concerned with picking up are either in a direction between 270 and 279 except KMOS, which is so damned powerful I don't need to worry about it, it will come regardless of where I point the antenna.
I need a preamp. I will have roughly 50 or 60 feet of cable from the antenna to the main splitter. From there split off to 4 different locations. There may possibly be a second split at some of the TV's to feed a DVR, and also the TV's own tuner.
My current setup is what the house was equipped with when I bought it. It works well enough, most of the time, but suffers in wind and inclement weather. It's a very old uhf/vhf yagi type antenna, a very old winegard preamp, a recently (4 yrs ago) HDA-200 distribution amp.
I'm pointing at the KC tv market. They are all UHF since the end of analog. What I've got to work with is a roughly 30 foot antenna tower, a brand new DB8e, a roll of new rg6quad cable, and good compression type ends (running new cable everywhere). To the best of my knowledge, the only thing my plan is lacking is the selection of a good preamp. Within reason, price is not an object, as I'd rather pay for the best one now, than do this again.
I'm leaning toward one of the kitztech preamps. There's one that is a straight 24 dB gain, and one adjustable 0-36dB gain. I don't want to do much adjusting, as I intend to climb the tower as few times as possible, but if I can dial it to the max and 36 dB isn't too much, I'm ok with that. I just don't know if there's a way to tell from a tvfool report how much amplification will be overamplification.
Also, confirm if I'm correct on this, but if possible, I would do better with a preamp strong enough that I don't need to use a distribution amp, right?
Thanks!