Help in picking an antenna

[hdhead]

Been a lurker for a while...
I live in 63070 and have no clear line of sight for most of the St. Louis stations. I am using a CM 4221 4 bay with a wineguard AP-4800 28db preamp into a dish 942. I am able to pick up sikeston and padukah stations with 60% reliability and would like to improve reception. I was thinking about stepping up to the 8 bay CM 4228, the wineguard HD-9095P or antennacraft MXU59 to help bring in these stations. Worth stepping up? I am worried that the latter two might be a little too directional. Any thoughts or personal experience? Thanks in advance.

 

[Carl B]

I believe you find that the CM 4228 is more directional (i.e., smaller beam width) than the Winegard 9095.

 

[Lorenzo]

I say that definately you don't want the 8 bay bowtie. I checked http://www.hdtvprimer.com/Antennas/comparing.html which has specs for both the 4 and 8 bay Channel Masters. The 8 bay has around 2 db more gain than the 4 bay (midchannels) but has about 2 db less gain around 14 degrees off it's main beam than the 4 bay so in your case they both have about the same gain when pointed 14 degrees off the main beam.( By map it looks like there's about a 28 degree difference between Paducah and Sikeston from 63070.)
That site doesn't rate the Winegard but Winegard has gain and polars for the 9095. It sez it has more gain than the 8 bay but I doubt it but it's beamwidth is more than the 8 bay. I think what you should do is to raise the antenna or invest in a rotor. You can tell this (rotor gain) by pointing your 4 bay directly at both P and S and see if there's enough increased gain to make it worth the rotor cost. Your preamp is about as good as they get without spending a fortune.

 

[Kevinw]

That's great considering both cites are at least 90 miles away.