considering dual antennas, what to get?

[cablewrangler]

RabbitEars.Info

I have an old antenna but it looks a lot like the Channel Master Advantage 45.

My problem is that I can't get a good signal of all the channels I want all the time. More or less, there are two groups of towers and they are almost 90 degrees apart so if I'm really careful I can turn my antenna to a point between the two groups of antennas and if I'm lucky I might get all the stations reliably for a few days. The first group includes 10‑1 (17), 3‑1 (36), 8‑1 (8) and the second group includes 6‑1 (23), 31‑1 (31), and 15‑1 (15). A neighbor recently built a new house next to my house and installed this. They look like dual RCA ANT751E with a Winegard combiner. That works well for him but I was hoping to get dual antennas with a bit more gain and use an ordinary splitter/combiner. I have a lot more devices and splitters in my home. I was thinking of getting two Winegard HD7694P and combining them but I'm not sure it would work. Seems like the key for using two antennas is to be sure they are highly directional so that the antenna pointed at one group of towers doesn't pick up much of the signals from the other group of towers. Any suggestions for what antenna to use in a dual antenna setup?

 

[videobruce]

That choice is wrong and overpriced. You are correct about using Yagi's
How far is the furthest tower where you live and have you been to TVFool's site?

 

[cablewrangler]

I found a solution a few months ago that's been working very well and didn't cost a lot. I bought two Steren ANT-UHF16/PLEG for about $33 then I joined them with an ordinary bidirectional splitter/combiner.

I've used TVFool in the past but their info wasn't kept current. Per the Rabbitears link I provided in my opening post the furthest tower that I care about is 38.7 miles away. The distance is the same according to TVFool.

I'm not sure which antennas you were referring to when you said one is all UHF and the other is UHF and VHF. The Channel Master Advantage 45 recieves Low VHF, High VHF and UHF. The RCA ANT751E I mentioned receives High VHF and UHF. Though, the documentation available from RCA isn't very clear about that. The Winegard HD7694P receives High VHF and UHF. The two antennas I bought receive High VHF and UHF. I'm using them with a 25 dB amp that has an FM trap.

 

[videobruce]

My bad, post corrected, possible a bad link when I searched. I also should of stated RabbitEars, not TV Fool which isn't updated, thou their forum gets more responses.

That single word link (hard to find) shows a pair of this RCA named antennas.

 

[Jim Navotney]

Just use the combo antenna to get channel 8 and buy a cheap 4 bay bowtie for the other direction

 

[cablewrangler]

I actually do have an old UHF only antenna (a huge arrow shaped Yagi, I think it is called) and tried combining it with the old combo antenna a few different ways. It didn't work. The old combo antenna had a knack for picking up signals from towers it wasn't pointed directly at and it seemed like the signals received by the two dissimilar antennas interfered with each other even when combined with equal lengths of cable.

I considered getting an 8 bay bowtie antenna that could point in two different directions (4 bays per direction) and could have put a VHF add-on on one of the directions but wasn't sure how well it would work. Plus, the VHF add-on didn't look like it would have much gain compared to the bowtie's UHF gain. Instead of the VHF add-on I considered getting a whole separate huge VHF only antenna but didn't have room on the mast for it and the 8 bay bowtie and my wireless Internet service dish. I didn't want to put up a second mast. In the end I saw a good deal for getting two Steren ANT-UHF16/PLEG and they've worked.

 

[Fringe Reception]

Cablewrangler,

Did you follow the "rules" when you tried to combine your antennas? 1) using a common coax splitter, two antennas must be identical and unless pointed in exactly the same direction, each antenna loses half of the signals they collect. 2) a VHF and UHF antenna can be combined on the same coax using a UVSJ without any signal loss. (UVSJ = UHF-VHF-Signal-Joiner.

 

[cablewrangler]

No, I think, but I still tried it. I tried stacking the old antennas (putting one directly under the other as seen on some other website) and pointing them the same way at a midpoint between the two groups of towers. I tried pointing the UHF only antenna one way and the combo almost 90 degrees away at the other group of towers. Both times I combined them using a 2-way splitter/combiner. I wasn't sure a common splitter would work so I bought one that was advertised as two way. Perhaps a splitter is a splitter and really doesn't need to be labeled as two way. I don't know. My problem with using a UHF and VHF signal joiner is that I have a loose group of towers in one direction that provides 3 UHF channels and about 90 degrees away is the other group of towers that provides 2 UHF channels and 1 High-VHF channel. If there was only a VHF station from that direction then I could have used two antennas and combined them with a UHF and VHF signal joiner. Or perhaps I could have set up 3 antennas if I had space: 2 UHF pointed in two different directions plus a VHF.