[WIRELESS ENGINEER]

Overload can happen when a preamp makes an already strong station too strong.

Since the AGC in the TV will then reduce its rf gain to try and compensate, weaker stations may dissapear.

If the signal or signals are strong enough, you may see no channels at all using a preamp.

Cable companies and MATV providers solve this by using cut channel antennas and making every channel's signal levels the same by padding.

This is why you should always keep your feed line as short as possible and try to go without a preamp first.

In my personal installation for example, most of my stations are more than 50 miles away and non line of sight.

However there are two stations that are line of sight within 20 miles.

Using a 8 bay bowtie and 50 ft of rg6 I get 45 channels aimed in one direction.

However, adding even a medium gain preamp causes loss of most and sometimes all channels due to these two or three strong locals.

I can buy bullet notch filters at 30 dollars each to eliminate these three channels from causing overload with a preamp but the added loss they would introduce would agasagasin cause the loss of some weaker stations I want to watch.

So for me, no preamp is the way to go but all setups are not the same.

Being able to rotate an antenna also can be used to reduce or eliminate overload when using large high gain antennas
Especially when the strong locals are to the side or to the rear of the antenna.

The db8e is such an antenna in UHF only and the winegard 7698 is also with the addition of high vhf elements.