Hi Everyone,

I'm not sure if this is the correct newsgroup for this type of question
- sorry if I've posted in the wrong newsgroup. I want to ditch my cable
and go with an antenna. I'm trying to figure out what would be the best
type for my location.

All the channels thatI want to pick up are less than or equal to 25
miles from my home, except for one. The one that is the greatest
distance away, FOX, is 30 miles away from my home.

All of the channels that are less than or equal to 25 miles are between
12 o'clock and 1 o'clock. They consist of a mixture of VHF and UHF
channels. FOX (30 miles away) is at my 2 o'clock and is a UHF channel.

Antennaweb.org says I need a large directional with pre-amp antenna in
order to pick up FOX, but I can't get something that big to put on the
side of my house. My wife will scream bloody murder if I did that. I
have no obstructions of the sky in the directions that the antenna will
have to point.

What type of antenna would be best for my circumstance? I would prefer
something that is small and not very noticeable (maybe something that
could pass for a DirecTV dish). Also, I would prefer to have it point
in a fixed direction so that I do not have to turn it in order to view
different channels. I'm planning on getting a HDTV in the near future.
Do I need a special type of antenna in order to view a TV program in HD
or will any antenna work?

Thanks,
CR Junk

I'm not sure if this is the correct newsgroup for this type of question
- sorry if I've posted in the wrong newsgroup. I want to ditch my cable
and go with an antenna. I'm trying to figure out what would be the best
type for my location.

All the channels thatI want to pick up are less than or equal to 25
miles from my home, except for one. The one that is the greatest
distance away, FOX, is 30 miles away from my home.

All of the channels that are less than or equal to 25 miles are between
12 o'clock and 1 o'clock. They consist of a mixture of VHF and UHF
channels. FOX (30 miles away) is at my 2 o'clock and is a UHF channel.

Antennaweb.org says I need a large directional with pre-amp antenna in
order to pick up FOX, but I can't get something that big to put on the
side of my house. My wife will scream bloody murder if I did that. I
have no obstructions of the sky in the directions that the antenna will
have to point.

What type of antenna would be best for my circumstance? I would prefer
something that is small and not very noticeable (maybe something that
could pass for a DirecTV dish). Also, I would prefer to have it point
in a fixed direction so that I do not have to turn it in order to view
different channels. I'm planning on getting a HDTV in the near future.
Do I need a special type of antenna in order to view a TV program in HD
or will any antenna work?

I'd say that AntennaWeb is giving you pretty decent advice. It's
perhaps a bit conservative but not excessively so.

I'm operating under similar circumstances - I'm near the south of the
San Francisco peninsula about 35-40 miles away from the transmitters
in San Francisco. We get a good, clean picture using a "medium
fringe" UHF/VHF antenna (log-periodic plus corner reflector), mounted
on a 18' mast on the roof (antenna height above ground is somewhere
around 30'). We do have an amplifier for our indoor signal
distribution, but could probably get away without one if we were only
driving one or two TVs/tuners.

We don't need to use the rotator, since all but one of the stations
are north of us. The one exception is a San Jose station, which is
right "off the back" of the main antenna. We *would* need to use the
rotator, but I built a separate single-channel Yagi antenna and
pointed it at San Jose and used a combiner.

Most people around here who have roof antennas, have ones which are in
roughly the same ballpark as ours... some higher, some not quite so
high. The height helps a lot - an antenna down at roof level is going
to "see" its horizon only about half as far away as an antenna with an
extra 15' of height, and that's enough to make the difference between
a clean ghost-free signal and one that's pretty noisy or ghosty.

Most TV antennas have a relatively broad forward beamwidth. Your
"noon to 2 o'clock" antenna pattern is about 60 degrees, which is
probably going to be workable for a standard medium-fringe
log-periodic antenna design if you've got the antenna up high enough.

If you don't have enough height, then you're going to have a
substantially weaker signal hitting the antenna, which would mean
you'd need more antenna gain, which means a longer and more obvious
antenna and a narrower beam-width, which might require a rotator.

A small, roof-mounted, non-obvious antenna which might pass itself off
as a satellite dish is likely to be nearly omnidirectional, having
little or no gain, and in your situation it won't "get a good look" at
the transmitters (they may be over the horizon), and you won't get a
good signal.

The requirements for digital TV (hi-def or standard-def) are not all
that different from the requirements for NTSC analog. If you have a
non-snowy, non-ghosty analog TV picture, you'll likely get a good
digital-TV signal from any digital TV transmitter operating at full
power. However, since most DTV transmitters today seem to be running
at reduced power to avoid interference with nearby*analog-TV
frequencies, you can't necessarily count on getting a good digital
signal lock. If your analog TV signal is noisy or ghosty, receiving
digital TV properly is likely to be a problem.

Unfortunately, there's no real substitute for a good antenna, up on a
mast, clear of trees and buildings and other obstructions, pointed in
the correct direction. Any compromise you make from that, will
probably compromise the signal to some extent.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Thanks for the info Dave. I've been doing a little research and I'm
thinking about trying a DB4 antenna to see how it does. I've read some
post where people said it did well when they set it up inside their
attic. If the attic doesn't work, they I may see about attaching it to
the chimney on my house. Maybe this will do the trick.

Doe anyone have any opinion on the DB4 antenna?

CR Junk

wrote in message
oups.com...
Thanks for the info Dave. I've been doing a little research and I'm
thinking about trying a DB4 antenna to see how it does. I've read some
post where people said it did well when they set it up inside their
attic. If the attic doesn't work, they I may see about attaching it to
the chimney on my house. Maybe this will do the trick.

Doe anyone have any opinion on the DB4 antenna?

CR Junk

If it's a 2 story house, I would try something in the attic. I have a Radio
Shack $24.99 UHF Corner Reflector Yagi on the vent pipe up on the roof with
a rotator and ChannelMaster amplifier. My local stations are 26 - 35 miles
away. Most days I also get HDTV from Philadelphia stations 64 miles away. A
lot of this is going to depend on how much power the stations are
transmitting. The stations I am picking up are 100KW to 700KW. VHF stations
will operate with a lot less. The orientation of the house is such that you
can not see the TV antenna from the front of the house.

Tam/WB2TT