BTW, the tvfool link you posted said is was resolved for city-level only. Here's a link to an analysis for the exact coordinates you gave at 40 feet high:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...b7c8ea3f29b1bd
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Originally Posted by mdoverstreet
how come he would have a much better chance of getting Springfield, MO when it is further away than Little Rock, AR?
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It's because your uncle's house is on the "back" side of a mountain facing the Little Rock transmitters. Here is a link showing the terrain profile between KARK (Little Rock) and your uncle's place. The transmitter is on the left, and your uncle's place is on the right, the distance is 73.1 miles. Note the hill just before your uncle's place that is causing the signal to pass way over his head...
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...dALLTV%26n%3d5
Going the other way, here's a profile view for KOZK (Springfield). In this case, you uncle is on the side of the hill facing Springfield, so he's got a better shot at it even though the distance is 93.1 miles...
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...ALLTV%26n%3d14
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I was wanting to find a tower and put two AntennaCraft HBU55's on it. What do ya'll think?
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If you're talking about ganging them together (facing exactly the same direction), then this *can* work, but you'll probably have a hard time optimizing the spacing between them to get maximum gain out of both the UHF and VHF bands. You can optimize for one band, but you'll have a hard time getting good results out of both bands simultaneously.
If you're talking about having two antenna point in different directions, then this won't work. Connecting antennas pointed in different directions will surely cause a reduction in gain.
If you were thinking of using an A-B switch, then that will work.
When ganging antennas, you're better off using single-band identical antennas pointed in the same direction. To do this for VHF and UHF bands, this means a pair of antennas for each band.
You may want to try just a signal combo antenna first. An HBU-55, HD7698P, or HD8200U might be enough by itself (if used in conjunction with a good pre-amp). You will probably also want an antenna rotator to optimize reception on each of the channel clusters.
I'm not sure how high of a tower you were thinking about, but it might not be worth it to go crazy on height. By playing around with the interactive tvfool maps, it doesn't look like height really pays off until you reach at least 70 feet or more above ground level. If you're not prepared to go that high, then you're probably better off with a more modest setup that will be more resilient when it comes to wind and stormy weather.
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Also, what kind of amplifier should I use, if needed?
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Yes, a pre-amp is highly recommended. To preserve as much signal integrity as possible coming out of the antenna(s), you'll want to find a pre-amp with as low of a Noise Figure as you can (below 3 dB is pretty good). The Antennacraft 10G202, Winegard 8700, and Channel Master 7777 are decent choices.
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Before the digital transsition, he could get some Little Rock, AR channels, and that was with the wore out antenna. Now he can't.
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What used to be a slightly snowy or ghosted analog picture won't cut it for digital. Digital TV needs a pretty clean signal to be decoded, but once you get above that threshold, you get an awesome picture.