Need help choosing indoor antenna...

[ToddUGA]

Tell me you don't have the 7777amp inside? Just the the power supply, right? The fewer the connectors the better, especially if you using pliers to crimp them. Are you using a good RG-6?

Yep, just the power supply. I actually went out and bought some decent connectors and a good crimper and crimped all the ends I could reach. It actually raised my signal a little. As for the RG-6, it's brand new cable I got from solidsignal.com.

 

[lunkie]

You said you were in the city, any tall buildings or trees or hills between you and the towers? How much of a difference is there with and with out the preamp? You may have to try going up 5 ft but maybe do it 1 ft at a time. You said your brother lives 5 miles away, has a smaller antenna and gets better reception. Is he higher in elevation? Less obstuctions, Closer to the towers?

 

[ToddUGA]

You said you were in the city, any tall buildings or trees or hills between you and the towers? How much of a difference is there with and with out the preamp? You may have to try going up 5 ft but maybe do it 1 ft at a time. You said your brother lives 5 miles away, has a smaller antenna and gets better reception. Is he higher in elevation? Less obstuctions, Closer to the towers?

There are some large oaks right in my line of sight. I tried it with and without the pre-amp and the picture and signal strength were worse without it. I'm thinking I may have multipath issues because my signal strength fluctuates wildly.

My brother has his antenna at about the same height. He doesn't have hardly any trees to worry about though.

I'm going to try and adjust position on roof and the height and see if I can get better signal strength.

 

[lunkie]

The trees are difinitely a problem. Do they loose all or any leaves down in Ga in the winter. If they do, reception will only get worse when the leaf out in spring. I see from your previous posts you only need ch 4 vhf everthing else is uhf. Well trying to reposition might help. If taking a tree(s) down is out, the only other things I can suggest is a high gain ch4 only yagi with a separate high gain uhf only and or wait till after 2009 when WMAZ moves to ch 13 (tentative)http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf. If that happens you would still need a higher gain uhf and a better preamp to make it work.

 

[ToddUGA]

The trees are difinitely a problem. Do they loose all or any leaves down in Ga in the winter. If they do, reception will only get worse when the leaf out in spring. I see from your previous posts you only need ch 4 vhf everthing else is uhf. Well trying to reposition might help. If taking a tree(s) down is out, the only other things I can suggest is a high gain ch4 only yagi with a separate high gain uhf only and or wait till after 2009 when WMAZ moves to ch 13 (tentative)http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-06-1082A2.pdf. If that happens you would still need a higher gain uhf and a better preamp to make it work.

Yep, and they are in full bloom right now.

I'm going to move my antenna and raise it a bit and see if I can shoot around the trees. If not, I'm probably just going to buy a 91XG for the UHF since it handles multipath problems pretty well. What kind of VHF antenna would I need if I just want to pick up VHF channel 4? I figure I could put up the 91XG and a separate VHF antenna since the 7777 has separate inputs.

 

[lunkie]

Yep, and they are in full bloom right now.

I'm going to move my antenna and raise it a bit and see if I can shoot around the trees. If not, I'm probably just going to buy a 91XG for the UHF since it handles multipath problems pretty well. What kind of VHF antenna would I need if I just want to pick up VHF channel 4? I figure I could put up the 91XG and a separate VHF antenna since the 7777 has separate inputs.

Winegard and CM both used to make single channels, but I don't think so any more. There's this outfit in Canada that does. http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/cutchannel.pdf. has about 4db more gain at ch 4 than what you have now. They have dist/dealers in USA & Ga. They also make a uhf parabolic, http://megahz.com/specimages/Wade/D1338-BB.pdf. Check the gain on them big boys, -3db for the dbi spec.