San Luis Obispo, CA - DTV Channel Assignments

[SolidSignal_Mike]

[kniles]

I am using a DB-8 at 25' with a 7777 pre-amp, finely tunned to pick up ABC 63 miles away. I receive a 60-72% signal on my HR10-250. About 5% of the time I have drop outs on windy days. It does work good at night and early morn. but fall off in the day time. ABC HD is new to my area and I suspect ABC is not up to full power. The bottom line is that it is very close to being reliable, but falls a little short for recording HD programming. My question is could I make this 5% a little more stable by adding one more pre-amp, or is there a easy fix to bust the signal a little bit.
It should be noted that this area has only three locals on OTA, all three on seperate towers.
12-1 CBS in Santa Maria 95% signal at 34 miles 118dg
6-1 NBC in SLO 72% signal at 7 miles receives from back of DB-8 in null 360dg
3-1 ABC in Santa Barbara at 63 miles 128dg

[SolidSignal_Mike]

Your 7777 is definitely making up for the 25 feet of cable, so another pre-amp would not help in my opinion. Be sure you have the antenna pointed in the best possible direction for all three stations. The DB8 picks up roughly 100 degrees wide, so you could be off by a few degrees and still get good reception. Raising the antenna up almost always helps a bit too. Be sure you don’t have any unneeded splitters in line, or if you re only splitting to 2 TVs don’t use a 3-way. At 65 miles it is normal to experience a drop out every now and then, just because of atmospheric conditions, but I am confident you can get better reception.

Can you receive NBC no matter where you point the DB8? You may want to go with a directional if this is the case, because your other two stations are only 10 degrees apart. I would recommend a CM4228 by Channel Master or the Terrestrial Digital 91XG

-Mike

[kniles]

Mike thank you for you reply. I have 50' of RG-6, store bought, from the antenna to the Pre-Amp power supply. I took a small TV on the roof and moved it around about 180 degrees and located the highest signal I could find for ABC, very directional at 63 miles.
I went to HDTV Primer and looked at the specs on the 4248 and 4228 and bought the DB-8 because it had a larger null area to the back side of the antenna. The C.M. Ref chart said the 4248 maxed out at 60 miles and the DB-8 works up to 70 miles or more from transmitters . Before ABC HD came on line I was getting 92% CBS at 34 miles and 89% NBC at 7 miles with a DB-4, both came in rock solid. But then one day there was ABC HD. No one in SLO has ABC HD except OTA . I still have the DB-4 and thought about two antennas but was concerned about the DB loss throught the coupler and ABC being on the edge.

[SolidSignal_Mike]

You could try raising the antenna up higher, this almost always helps the reception. My other suggestion is to get a directional antenna, with my experience I have found if a station is 7 miles away you will get it no matter where you pointed, and it helps if the station is directly behind you. I would only try joining the antennas as a last resort.

-Mike

[kniles]

I can't raise the antenna to much higher because of where I live. If I put up a new antenna it will be my fifth install on my roof, (wife). So I need to make sure it will make 10-15% difference. I thought my DB-8 is Large range directional antenna. Is there a big difference between the DB-8 and the CM4228 by Channel Master or the Terrestrial Digital 91XG in preformance at 63 miles. I know the 91XG is a much different type of antenna but the DB-8 and 4228 seam to be about the same.

[SolidSignal_Mike]

The 4228 and DB8 look similiar but are very different, the big difference is that the 4228 picks up 15 degrees wide and the DB8 gets 100 degrees wide. The DB8 is much more suseptable to multi-path and interference. The 4228's narrow beam makes it a much stronger antenna and strongly reduces the chance of interference. The XG would also be good, but the 4228 would be best in my opinion.

-Mike

[kniles]

Mike I ordered a 4228 and will give it a try. It must weight a little more because shipping is twice as much as the DB-8. Two day UPS was $88 and way to much. I plan to box up the DB-8 and send it back for restock. By the time I get the 4228 and you receive the DB-8 it will be very close to 30 days. I plan to let you know what kind of readings I get out for the 4228. Thank you for your help.

[SolidSignal_Mike]

I hope you have much better luck with the 4228. It does weight a couple more pounds than the DB8, but the shipping is high because the box is 40 X 40 and its a over size package by UPS Standards. This unit is a built a lot better than the DB8 and that's partly because it ships fully assembled, it also reduces the chance for error when putting an antenna together.

-Mike

[kniles]

I installed the 4228 and find tunned it to the ABC tower. What I found was maybe just a little better than the DB-8 but not much, 60-70% no lock. Not to bad after 9:00 when the winds died down. It did bring in a spanish station at 92% at the same tower site. (Useing Goggle Earth off of AVS), ABC broadcasts at 250kw and the spanish station at 1000kw. CBS is the same at 92-95%. But NBC is not being picked up at all from 7 miles away. I took my DB-4 out of the garage, placed it on the roof, and hooked up to my HR10-250, get 90% without the per- amp off of NBC tower. Then tried a Radio Stack splitter- combiner at the back of the HR10 and got less than 20% on NBC. It also looked like ABC fell off a little on the 4228. I plan to try two more things. Combining the two antennas together on the mast, ahead of the 7777 per-amp, in all directions. The last thing is with out the per-amp.

[SolidSignal_Mike]

I definately think it's worth a try to get NBC. Before you do that you may want to try adding a splitter inside the house and run a cable from one of the ports to your TV. This will knock down the dB, because having NBC so close with an amp could be causing your receiver not to get it. In other words the high signal strength could be above the threshold your tuner.

If that's not the problem then try joining them. Make sure use equal lengths of cable from each antenna to the splitter (in this cause a combiner) and run that into the switch. You may also have to play around with the spacing of the antennas to get it right.

-Mike