I’m in a two story townhouse & it may be difficult to put up an outside antenna, especially since each unit has its own attic antenna. It has always worked quite well when I had to rely on it, which was not often when I had Comcast cable. But I’m now using it more with a Dish DVR which includes dual OTA tuners. It works great 99.9% of the time, but once in a while I get a brief temporary signal loss.
The Dish installer used existing coax to connect both the OTA & satellite signal & it goes through a coupler splitters & diplexers.
According to the DVR, I get 100% signal strength on a couple OTA channels, but low 80s on a couple others. And sometimes those dip into the 70s. Problem is I don’t know how low they dip when I get the signal loss. It could be caused by multipath, trees blowing in the wind, snow on the roof, etc. I would think the signal at the antenna should be OK and I thought using a medium gain preamp or an adjustable unit in order to give the signal a slight boost.
I could use a different antenna but do need VHF hi-band for channel 12 CBS/WBBM. The antenna that’s stuffed in the attic is quite large. In fact the longest elements are not properly locked into place due to interference with structural members. I don’t know if a replacement antenna would be any better since I really can’t go much larger. But since I don’t need VHF low-band then a replacement would not have the long elements.
Here is my TV Fool report:
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...03d91aacd57121
I thought about getting something like the Winegard HD7697P or HD7698P. However my current antenna looks like a slightly smaller version of the Winegard HD7084P. I’d have to climb back into the attic in order to count the elements, but I did not see any make or model number on it.
I don’t see a lot of difference in specs between these 3 Winegard models. If mine is similar to the 7084P, would there be any advantage to getting a 7697P or 7698P?
I realize I’m not providing a whole lot to go on regarding my current antenna specs, but typically would my scenario benefit more from a preamp or from a new antenna?
Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.