South West Michigan advice requested

vielfras · 27-Jan-2015, 9:54 PM

Signal Analysis link: http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...2c1563ad761cb4

Hello, I am looking for some advice on improving my tv reception. I live in Saugatuck, MI about 2.5 miles from Lake Michigan. I live in a wooded area on the edge of an inland lake that is to my south-southeast about 150ft from the shore. Between me and the shore there are mature trees.

My antenna is a Clearstream 2v pointed approximately at approximately 100 degrees located in my attic. I have a Rocketfish Bidirectional mini drop amplifier hooked up to the antenna. Here is a link to the amplifier page (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/rocketfi...&skuId=9449135)

From the amplifier I have one 20 ft coax cable running to my bedroom and one 25 foot coax running to my living room with a splitter to run a dual tuner home theater pc.

The true channels I want are either 5 or 11(PBS channels), 7, 8, 19, and 20. Currently 19, 20, and 7 come in excellent. Channels 5 and 8 can come in great some days and are unwatchable on other days. So I am really looking to get these last two to come in better.

I tried a Clearstream4v thinking it would work better, but I really saw no improvement. I have also tried replacing the Rocketfish amplifier with a Winegard LNA-200 amplifier to just the bedroom and it did not work as well as the rocketfish amplifier.

Apparently channels 5 and 8 are low power VHF channels. Would adding something like an Antennas Direct C5 ClearStream 5 High Gain Digital VHF Antenna help out my situation?

If mounting to my roof is my only option, what would be the best anntenna(s) to get my locals and maybe pickup very distant channels like Chicago or Milwaukee? The reason I ask is sometimes I pull in real channel 36 which is in East Lansing 91 miles from my home.

Thanks for looking

Jason l · 28-Jan-2015, 1:12 AM

I live in Holton mi and I do get Real channel 8. 61 miles away I have a homemade bow tie a bay McLap design with the larger 10"whiskers. That channel was proven hard to get I made several bowtie antenna is until I found the bigger whiskers with the reflector I get CBS real channel 8 steady with no dropouts great channels to have3.1and 3.2 the CW.I would try just mounting out side first with the set up you have if that don't work you may need a different antenna

GroundUrMast · 28-Jan-2015, 4:18 AM

The least expensive option at this point is to test reception outdoors using the existing antenna. You attic is one of the impediments to reliable reception. Trees are the next and possibly more significant, especially on wet windy days.

The CS-4 could not do any better with real channels 2 through 13 because these channels are not in the UHF band. You have only one element related to VHF reception, the VHF dipole on the CS-2V or CS-4V. And the dipole is not nearly long enough to offer much Low-VHF (real CH-2 through CH-6) capability.

If I was in the same location, starting from scratch, I'd focus first on outdoor mounting options that avoided the obstruction of trees. That could mean a significant investment in a tower or the services of an arborist/timber cutter. With an unobstructed line toward the transmitters, I could consider a mid sized all-channel antenna like the Antennacraft HD850, or a combination of antennas with similar performance that covers real channels 2 through 51.

If I could not get over or past the trees, I'd step up to a larger antenna combination, for example; An Antennas Direct DB8E to cover the UHF band and allow for flexible aiming. An Antennacraft Y10713 to provide reception of the High-VHF band (real CH-7 through CH-13). And finally, an Antennacraft Y526 dedicated to real CH-5.

Combining two or three antennas that are serving separate bands is fairly inexpensive and easy. UHF/VHF combiners (UVSJ) are available from Antennas Direct, Radio Shack and other suppliers. High/Low Signal Joiners (HLSJ) are available from sources such as 3starinc.com, summitsource.com, solidsignal.com, etc.

You may have noticed that I have not mentioned an amplifier until now... The purpose of an amplifier is to deal with loss in cable and splitters on the output (downstream) side of the amp. Amplifiers may help overcome some noise generated inside your tuner as well. However, no amplifier is capable of 'pulling' signal from the antenna or air. Depending on how long the series of coax is between the antenna and tuner(s) and how much insertion loss due to splitting, an amplifier may be needed. But until your antenna can produce a reliable signal there's no point in talking about a specific amplifier.