Fringe Location PreAmp/Antenna Upgrading Technician HELP...

[Inclined Orbit]

A little confusing on how the OP has things all wired up but I can say an AGC amplifier can be troublesome. They work great on a test bench but hooked to an antenna, signals from the police car down the street or fire truck up the street or the ham operator two doors down will cause the gain of the amp to run all over the place and can affect what makes it to your TV receiver.

It sounds like you might be pointing two different antennas in the same band two different directions then combining them. If you have a preamp on each antenna before the combining process it should be ok, but if your using a passive combiner (splitter) and a preamp after the splitter you will loss more than half the signal off each antenna in combining. If you combine two identical antennas pointed at the same tower and at the right spacing you can get up to 3dB gain, but pointed different directions you lose 3dB or more. A combiner for separate VHF and UHF antennas has very minimal loss.

If you have preamps up at the antennas your coax loss will be less of a concern, but I would use a good quality RG-6 at minimum and I don't use RG-59 for even short jumpers any more. If its a really long run and most of your reception is UHF then RG-11 is nice.

 

[SlackWaterRadioGuy]

A little confusing on how the OP has things all wired up but I can say an AGC amplifier can be troublesome. They work great on a test bench but hooked to an antenna, signals from the police car down the street or fire truck up the street or the ham operator two doors down will cause the gain of the amp to run all over the place and can affect what makes it to your TV receiver.

It sounds like you might be pointing two different antennas in the same band two different directions then combining them. If you have a preamp on each antenna before the combining process it should be ok, but if your using a passive combiner (splitter) and a preamp after the splitter you will loss more than half the signal off each antenna in combining. If you combine two identical antennas pointed at the same tower and at the right spacing you can get up to 3dB gain, but pointed different directions you lose 3dB or more. A combiner for separate VHF and UHF antennas has very minimal loss.

If you have preamps up at the antennas your coax loss will be less of a concern, but I would use a good quality RG-6 at minimum and I don't use RG-59 for even short jumpers any more. If its a really long run and most of your reception is UHF then RG-11 is nice.

ty on the AGC amplifier info... i was wondering that myself and it seems so.. thank you.. as far as the antenna its the antennas direct DB8e, with no amp lol as i found out today it wasn't even working and 64 ft of rg6 down to the tv...
as soon as i can get to the panels ill make sure there as square with each other as possible, i read where some one guy got the 8bay set up and had trouble so he disconnected and ran just one panel by its self and got way better reception,,,his 8 bay was over kill or it would never actually be a true flat panel antenna...
i been questioning if i can ever get the 2 movable panels perfect and if not then yes ill be screwing my signal away, thats why im thinking go yagi beam so im not dealing with 2, 4bays eliminating a possable weak link in the chain....

Thank you for the info... you helped alot!!!
ill be going with the non AGC amp now, that is if i actually need it... ill be doing some new testing this weekend if i can with the new info of my amp actually wasn't working adding more back to the drawing board kinda bs...lol !!!

 

[Titanium]

Sorry. tons of info out there for the Silicon Dust tuners. They have been on the market for almost 15 years. Amazon product ASIN B076FNSM6B
The Silicon Dust HDHomeRun tuner is LAN based and uses a network to stream the channels to any media device on the network. No internet or streaming service, just connect the HomeRun tuner to the antenna, a router and power. I used Cat 6 to power via POE and connected to a LAN/WLAN router. The TV channels can be viewed on any smart or computing device on your home network.

Over the years, I typically watched TV and controlled the HomeRun tuner using a HTPC connected to one TV. But on occasion viewed on a tablet, IOS and Android smart phones, and for the last year used an Android STB that I bought on Amazon. Almost any smart or computing device can be used to view and control the HomeRun. Onscreen or remote control units change channels through the LAN/WLAN, display signal meters, DVR, etc. Really great to have a real time and full function meter displayed on your smartphone while adjusting the antenna.

In my case, a tuner in the house would not provide reliable reception on most channels and over half of the channels would not lock after the run of RG6 quad shield. My only option for reliable TV was to put the tuner at the antenna,. Using a rotator to optimize, could receive both Sacramento and the Bay networks. Looking at your signal map, doubt the bay panel antenna has enough directional gain and too wide of beam even if optimized forward. Good Luck... sometimes propagation is found in the smoke and mirrors.

 

[primestar31]

I used the predecessor/prototype of the XG91 antenna way back in 1987-1989 for a few years. It was on a 55 foot mast, and I was using a Winegard high-gain UHF only preamp, that had a 1db noise figure. I could receive watchable UHF signals from Toledo, Ohio, 135 miles away.

I've used actual new style HDB91x's antennas for the last 7 years or so. They hold up to Michigan Winters just fine. Never had any issues with them due to snow or birds, and they are built MUCH better than the original XG91's that they were cloned from. They have about a 60 degree usable beamwidth, and work VERY well.

 

[televestech]

I tried the Televes preamp with AGC, and it was WORSE than the Kitztech Kt-200 I've been using for years. I can't recommend the Televes at all.

I think this requires some clarification. The 560483 is a poor choice for your application. Please, allow me to elaborate. This dual broadband input preamp is intended to provide a solution to combine two broadband antennas on a budget, as such, it has an input broadband combiner, which inevitably increases the effective NF of the system. It is a great solution for many scenarios where a customer wants or needs to combine two antennas overlapping bands, but due to the nature of the combination, it is quite obviously not the ideal choice to be used for just one feed, be it coming from a broadband antenna or by diplexing several band-specific antennas, particularly in a fringe situation, as in that case the system is losing precious C/N by the broadband combination that it might need to meet the decode threshold. Not because the amplifier is "bad" by any means (it actually provides much better filtering, flatness, and gain regulation compared to most of the commercially available amps currently offered in the market) but because of the input RF combination needed for the intended application. This is actually mentioned in the amp's manual:

The actual NF of the active itself is pretty much in line with that of the unit you are using (which is not .4dB). The right product for one feed would be the one input, P/N 560383, or in a fringe situation with two antennas, use two individual preamplifiers and combine after, once the aerial feeds have been preamped and the NF of the system established. I hope this clarifies a little better. These are really very good units when used as intended. If you have the opportunity I suggest you try the 560383, which provides the most accurate repack filtering in the industry nowadays and individually adjusts the VHF and UHF independently ensuring an optimal amount of gain is applied to each band over time avoiding overload.