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Yeah, I had a the TV up on the roof with 10 ft of RG6 and still wasn't able to receive KOMU or KOLR. A preamp didn't help because the signal wasn't good enough to begin with.
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That was a good test.
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I don't have a preamp, but i do have an HLJS. I had a major spike at 187MHz and figured it was the 2nd harmonic of 93.5's radio station. The HLJS killed the spike.
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Yeah, you need the HLSJ. Based on my estimate of your location, KYMK is only 1.5 mi away with aignal power of -6.8 dBm.
http://www.fmfool.com/modeling/tmp/5...3/Radar-FM.png
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I'm wondering if I need something other than the HD8200U or need to go up higher.
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If there are trees or buildings in the signal path, going higher might help. If not, then run your tvfool report at different heights. Going higher is expensive.
Antennas with more VHF-High gain than the 8200 are hard to find. You could build a wire rhombic.
You need a way to measure your progress, to tell you if more effort and expense are justified. Your SA can give you a rough idea of SNR, even if the tuner doesn't pick up the channel. A SiliconDust HDHR can give you SNR, which they call signal quality. My Sony TV gives SNR as low as 13 dB on the Diagnostics Screen, but only if it has picked up the channel. You could get your system noise figure down to about 1 dB if you use a halfwave coaxial balun and a preamp with a NF of 0.4 dB, but it might be a waste because the ambient local noise above the thermal noise floor is higher on VHF-High than on UHF.
I use my Sadelco DisplayMax 800 to measure the noise floor on an adjacent unused channel for an estimate of SNR.
I can also measure the signal and the noise in an adjacent unused channel on my old Sadelco 719E signal level meter (SLM). I have a VHF-High signal that is just barely above the noise level. A digital signal sounds like white noise if I turn on the audio. The 719E is on the left.
I assume that you have grounded your coax shield with a grounding block connected to the house electrical system ground to reduce the possibility of interference.