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Old 14-Sep-2014, 2:26 AM   #12
KevinTMC
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Georgia, USA
Posts: 17
I have a good progress report, as well as questions related to grounding.

My friend and I got started on the installation project this morning, but then thunderstorms came into the area and we had to quit for the day with it half-done. At that point, the antenna was assembled but sitting on the porch.

After the weather cleared, and with a highly important football game starting on CBS, I decided I would test out the components on the ground. I set the antenna in the driveway, pointed it in the approximate direction of Atlanta, hooked it up to the pre-amp and connected to the coax cable already running into the house (we're re-using cable and cable runs that DirecTV left behind), and...voila! I had a football game. Signal strength ran from 45-55 most of the time, broke up on a few occasions, but it worked.

(For kicks and giggles, here's a plot of the driveway location, with elevation set at 5', the lowest number that produced minimally-goofy results: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...d2433b3ddda6ae.)

I even tried cutting the pre-amp out of the loop, to see what would happen and verify that it was working correctly. CBS 46 didn't come in anymore, but NBC 11 still did...signal quality loss looked to be around 15 points.

At any rate, I'm delighted, because if it worked on the ground, reception will surely be quite excellent up on the roof. I'm also going to stop fretting about re-using random lengths of coax.

I am a bit unsure about the proper grounding procedure though. [Edit: We got it figured out.]

Last edited by KevinTMC; 15-Sep-2014 at 3:15 AM. Reason: Unnecessary questions and descriptions deleted
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