I moved. We bought a house, and moved into the sticks. Coincidentally, the house is inside of 50 miles from both Philly and Balitimore, giving me the opportunity to pull both television markets in. (The earth's curvature gives sea level line of sight to about 80 miles.) I'm an amateur radio extra class license holder, been doing radio for at least 15 years now.
I've got a dual-tuner DVR that streams to my home network, so all you need is a computer, smartphone, roku, amazontv, or xbox to watch the TV. 1TB hard drive for storing shows, and I get two major markets (only the major channels, nothing more than big-3 (abc, nbc, cbs) and FOX.) so I've got more TV than time to watch it, lol.
So far, for cost:
two antennas (about $45/ea)
two preamps (about $30/ea)
one DC-Pass splitter/combiner (about $7)
a new mast to replace the rusted one ($14)
a bunch of RG8-QuadShield (about $.25/ft)
Tablo dual-tuner (I think it was $200)
Total: $371
Now, I'm doing something relatively uncommon, but it works for me. I've got both antennas pointed in different directions, not quite 180-deg, but close. If it were 180-degree separation, we'd have to get fancy with the filtering, but luckily we don't. The front-to-back rejection on television antennas probably isn't enough, so we'd have to put an additional reflector (chicken wire or Al rod at the appropriate distance from the last element) and it'd get tricky.
No pictures yet, except for the prework. You'll want to do this.
Go to TV Fool and figure out if you can actually get TV at your location. I'm pretty good:
If yours looks like that, you're probably good. Any signal level under like -75dBm is going to take some serious work to get. You can, but it'll take more antenna than most people want on their house. My house had a 19ft antenna when I bought it, eventually I'm going to clean it up and reinstall it so I can get DC.
Next, look up each of the stations you care about. Many markets share towers, so you won't have to do this many times. Find the elevation of the antenna array on the tower (should be AGL, above ground level, or HAGL height above ground level) and then go to google earth to find the ground level surrounding the transmitter tower. Figure that all out, then you'll get coordinates and terrain height above Mean Sea Level (MSL). Write those down.
Now go to HeyWhatsThat path profiler. Click your antenna location, then click your antenna's height above ground level and make it match your receive site, and then the transmitter's location. Modify the height so it's correct. You'll see this:
And that's not bad. There's some edge diffraction, but it looks like there's still a chance for signal.
To be continued...
I've got a dual-tuner DVR that streams to my home network, so all you need is a computer, smartphone, roku, amazontv, or xbox to watch the TV. 1TB hard drive for storing shows, and I get two major markets (only the major channels, nothing more than big-3 (abc, nbc, cbs) and FOX.) so I've got more TV than time to watch it, lol.
So far, for cost:
two antennas (about $45/ea)
two preamps (about $30/ea)
one DC-Pass splitter/combiner (about $7)
a new mast to replace the rusted one ($14)
a bunch of RG8-QuadShield (about $.25/ft)
Tablo dual-tuner (I think it was $200)
Total: $371
Now, I'm doing something relatively uncommon, but it works for me. I've got both antennas pointed in different directions, not quite 180-deg, but close. If it were 180-degree separation, we'd have to get fancy with the filtering, but luckily we don't. The front-to-back rejection on television antennas probably isn't enough, so we'd have to put an additional reflector (chicken wire or Al rod at the appropriate distance from the last element) and it'd get tricky.
No pictures yet, except for the prework. You'll want to do this.
Go to TV Fool and figure out if you can actually get TV at your location. I'm pretty good:
If yours looks like that, you're probably good. Any signal level under like -75dBm is going to take some serious work to get. You can, but it'll take more antenna than most people want on their house. My house had a 19ft antenna when I bought it, eventually I'm going to clean it up and reinstall it so I can get DC.
Next, look up each of the stations you care about. Many markets share towers, so you won't have to do this many times. Find the elevation of the antenna array on the tower (should be AGL, above ground level, or HAGL height above ground level) and then go to google earth to find the ground level surrounding the transmitter tower. Figure that all out, then you'll get coordinates and terrain height above Mean Sea Level (MSL). Write those down.
Now go to HeyWhatsThat path profiler. Click your antenna location, then click your antenna's height above ground level and make it match your receive site, and then the transmitter's location. Modify the height so it's correct. You'll see this:
And that's not bad. There's some edge diffraction, but it looks like there's still a chance for signal.
To be continued...
Last edited:
