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The house is on the east side of the hill and a good forty feet lower than the peak. The peak, actually a ridge, is about 300' away and runs north/south Most local channels are west of that high ridge. At one time I had a roof top antenna, but it didn't do much good. I'd like to put an antenna on a thirty foot mast on that ridge, but am concerned about the signal loss. Is there a way to boost the signal? What grade wire would be best to use for this? I suspect the total run of wire would be shy of 500'. Presently we use Direct TV for all channels. The issue is signal loss during very bad weather. We don't mind losing most channels, but would like access to something at all times.
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I'm confused, do you have Direct TV now? Or do you want to get rid of DirTV and put up an over the air antenna? Or are you talking about moving the DirTv Dish? -
You're not the first person with this problem. Check out the online entries for John Walson.
I would make a list of the TV stations and research their transmitter locations & frequencies. The spread of the locations will determine the type of antenna you use and the frequencies determine the type of cable. RG11 has the lowest loss, but it's hard to work with; it's almost 1/2" in diameter. You can put an antenna preamplifier at the antenna itself and power it through the coax. The amplifiers come with a power inserter that would be located near your TV. The specific type of coax is also determined by how you run it down the ridge to your house. If you just lay it on the ground, animals will chew on it and sun and rain will degrade it. You could put it in conduit or get exterior grade coax or a type with a messinger wire in it for stringing on poles.Comment
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Speedbump, I have Direct TV and, along with the 'cable' channels, they also provide the locals. For a fee. The fee is not extravagant, but the real issue is losing the signal for all channels when there's a heavy storm. If I do the antenna thing for the locals, then I always get the signal regardless of the weather. This would make my wife very happy. Anxiety level rises quickly when there's no flickering tv!! I would bury it, adnadeau. Thanks for the advice.Comment
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You can use dual channel multiple grid antenna to solve this problemComment
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I had Dish Network and went through the same thing with my Wife. If you had a 10' dish like we had back in the day before Videocyphers came along, you could watch anything you wanted to at no cost if you could find it. No rain fade either. HOA's did away with the 10' dishes though. If you could get your hands on more small dishes, you could gang them together like we do in Amateur radio. Each antenna is good for so much gain and if you ganged more together your signal would be much stronger. I don't know if they make a harness to do this, but it would work if they did.Comment
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Well! Isn't THAT interesting!! I have the whole setup in the barn loft from when we had SkyVision! That was about fourteen years ago at another house. The small dish services were not available in our area, nor was cable. I ended up installing a 10' dish on a twenty foot mast. We used a Uniden unit. It was pretty neat. I'd still use it if it weren't for the lag time of switching satellites. So, are you saying I could use that ten foot dish to pick up channels??Comment
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I'm sure you could, if the LNB I think it's called is hot enough. They kept improving on them over the years back in the good old days. That's how the small dishes came to become popular. I imagine if you could mount one of the small dishes LNB's onto the 10 footer, you would have an amazing signal.Comment
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Now THAT's something that never occurred to me, Speedbump! Looks like there's some experimenting for me next spring...Comment
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