I've got three properties in different rural areas, i.e. central New York, Adirondack Mountains, New York, and northern Michigan. A large antenna at any of these places will not yield even one channel. With a preamp, I get many. Night-and-day difference. Note also that I test-run all antennas on site with a max of 20' of coax.
Here in central New York, where I've had a home for 30 years, I used to get one snowy VHF channel on RF 6 with a huge Wade VIP-307, as long as a good preamp was hooked it. With no amp, no TV.
Since the digital changeover, I put up three antenna sites on my property. I'm on the side of mountain, surrounded 360 degrees by more mountains. So, three sites gives me the best shots at three different city-targets - all 50-60 miles away and all in different directions. Again, big antennas e.g. Winegard HD8200, Winegard 9032, Wade-Delhi VIP-307, DB8, and 91XGs - all get absolutely nothing until a preamp gets hooked to them. Now, I get over a dozen channels consistently, many
HD, and almost 30 subchannels.
As I said, in all the rural areas I've worked on TV reception, using a good preamp is a "no brainer." Also, for my furthest antenna site that is 550 feet from my house, a 30
dB lineamp is also being used, along with the 28-30
dB preamp at the antenna, with RG11 coax buried in conduit.
I'll also note, that with the preamps, I've observed very little difference in performance between those rated at noise levels of 4
dB (Antenna Craft 10G212) and those rated at low and ultra-low noise. I have a British Research Communications amp rated a .6
dB noise on UHF, and it works no better when it comes to locking and holding a weak channel, then my 4
dB amp.
Had a similar experience working on my wife's parents house in northern Michigan. They are fairly close to two TV transmitters, both 30-40 miles away - and Michigan has virtually no mountains like here in New York. Lots of trees, though. They used to get two channels with rabbit ears until the digital change, then they lost both. Ends up their loss was due to #1, a change from VHF to UHF, and #2 a move to a more distant transmitter tower by one station. I installed a moderate size VHF/UHF antenna for them (90" boom Yagi), and it was able to pull in one channel, off and on, with no amp. I added a good preamp, and they know get both fine. Now, maybe there was some other most costly remedy, like a bigger antenna, multiple antennas, tower, etc. Why bother when we know a $27 amp fixed the problem?
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