Opinions on pulling in stations 70-80 miles away

[classic cartoon fan]

I am using a Winegard 1713YA for lone VHF out of Cincy, Antennas Direct 91xg for UHF, Winegard HDP 269 pre-amp, and CM 9521a rotator. They are located on the roof top of a large farm house (2 story) without any tree obstruction in the Columbus, Ohio direction.

I have the winegard and 91xg, which go into a combiner before going into the pre-amp then to the pre-amp part inside via a 50' RG6 cable from the antennas then out to a three way splitter. From the splitter a 25' RG6 goes to the Dish 722 and another 25' RG6 to the Dish 211 and only a 10' the 22" Vizio TV.

I am trying to get the Columbus, Ohio stations in all of the time if possible. I get them usually pretty well in the late evening and into the early morning hours and sometimes randomly through-out the day, (esp. WBNS channel 10). These stations are close to 80 miles away with WWHO being 73 miles away according to tvfool. I can manually tune to the transmitter number and see a little signal there, but not enough to capture it.

I was wondering if I could change things to a different pre-amp, or change other things. The only thing I wonder is if the Dayton stations will overload and drop out if I add a different pre-amp such as the 7777. On the other hand I get the Dayton stations through Dish, so I might just try it and see.

I was wondering what everyone else opinions might be on this. I'm willing to do whatever and that includes putting the antenna slightly higher if need be. I wish I could put them on the grain leg which is a good 70 feet up, but is a good ways from the house. I figured I would let everyone know that option.

 

[No Static At All]

You will likely see a slight improvement on VHF with the Antennacraft Y10-7-13 vs. your present YA-1713, but still doubtful you will see the desired stations reliably 24/7 at that distance. I recently replaced a YA-1713 with the Y10-7-13 at a fringe location with a noticeable improvement on stations 68 miles away. The YA-1713 would get them with frequent dropouts & pixelation during the day, but the Y10-7-13 reduced the pixelation to a more tolerable level for regular viewing.

The CM7777 pre-amp may overload with the local stations, but the dual input Winegard 2870 would likely provide a slight improvement in reliability with minimal risk of overload.

Let's see if what others have to say.

Good luck!!

 

[Bob2011]

Go to tvfool and click on the other option "Start Maps" and enter your exact address. You should get a list of stations in order of strength. Find a Columbus station and click the button in front of it to get a map of the signal from the transmitter. In your zip code there are blank areas and light pink where the land is slightly higher. If you are in a pink area I think you have a chance at getting these stations.

The first thing I would try is disconnecting the splitter and connecting only the one TV to see if there is any improvement. If so then you could replace the spitter with a better low loss one or upgrade to a distribution amplifier. If no improvement then look at the combiner and antenna spacing to correct any issues there. Antenna wise you already have a quality UHF antenna so there are limited options. They include stacking a second 91XG for another 2 to 3 db gain or building your own yagi antenna for one of those channels.

 

[classic cartoon fan]

It does show a little bit of pink where the house is, so I'm thinking there is a chance also. What kind of distribution amplifier would you recommend I use?

 

[No Static At All]

Your best bet at getting those distant signals is to amplify as close as possible to the antenna. A distribution amp can't do this & you also get about 1/2db of loss with the UVSJ combiner.

A high input tolerant, mast mounted pre-amp is a much better choice for both of these reasons.

 

[Bob2011]

It does show a little bit of pink where the house is, so I'm thinking there is a chance also. What kind of distribution amplifier would you recommend I use?

I would only consider one if you can prove your loss of the channel is from the 3 way splitter. I only used a amplified splitter when I had 4 TVs. The noise figures are usually higher than preamps so shop carefully.

The CM7777 preamp you are looking at has a slightly lower noise figure and a higher UHF gain than yours but you need to figure out if the $60 should be spent there or somewhere else. I would look at testing one TV connected directly to the 91XG before buying anything else. You need to figure out if the weakness is after your antenna or the antenna itself.

 

[Jim5506]

The biggest gains can be made with height when you are so far away.

The pre-amp can only amplify the signal the antenna captures and for deep fringe height is your friend.

Going from 30 ft. to 65 ft. you will just about double your signal at the antenna.

This will very likely necessitate installing a tower which is not inexpensive, but no amount of amplification can make up for lack of antenna height.

If you have a two story house, a channel master 5 section telescoping mast in the middle of the peak and guyed to all four corners should get you in the neighborhood of 65-70 ft. AGL.