TV Antenna Signal Amplifier

Maybe your house is at the drop off point for the signal. I think the signal is like a bullet.....it only goes so far then drops to the ground. idk
EM radiation follows the inverse square law - as the distance r from the source increases, the signal decrease by 1/r^2. In other words, it’s an exponential decay in signal strength.
 
My broadcast towers for all the majors are around 30 ish miles (keep in mind when we talk miles we are talking straight line, not road miles), I get all the majors with an attic RCA Yogi type antenna that I bought at Lowes for $100. I have it hooked into what used to be our paid cable TV distribution panel along with phone ect.
It distributes to 5 or 6 cable outlets in the home, all 5 or 6 TVs get perfect reception.
I did have one channel that was "iffy" at times, Fox, so I bought a cheap RCA signal boaster in Walmart for $13 or so years ago. I see they still sell them but not directly and the price has gone up. The lead from the attic antenna goes directly to the boaster in the photo and the boaster lead goes to the distribution panel on the upper right side of the photo. We have been pay TV free for over a decade now, never an issue with our setup.
Since I only needed a small boast I did not want to overdrive the signal by getting something too powerful. I get 95 to 100 signal on all TVs (most all 100).
I believe the boaster I bought was RCA AMP1450R
Again, if you just need a small boast dont over do it, most TVs will tell you signal strength of each channel.
Amazon/Walmart might be a good bet because you can return it.
This is my setup = (I dont think its still dirty like in the photo *L*)
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The results you get with any antenna are going to have a lot to do with the band you are trying to receive... UHF, VHF-hi (channels 7-13), or VHF-low (channels 2-6). You can't go by the channel number displayed on your TV (virtual channel) because it is often different than channel that they are transmitting on (RF channel). If you have a TV channel or channels that are using VHF-low band RF frequencies you should know that most of the antennas currently on the market will not receive VHF-low band frequencies. It takes a physically larger antenna to receive VHF-low band because the wavelengths are longer. I have this problem where I live, there is one channel (that has 4 sub channels) using channel 5. Because of this I had to go with a larger (and more expensive) outdoor antenna, not because of the distance from the transmitter, but because of this one VHF-low channel that I want to receive. A physically smaller antenna that is not VHF-low reception capable, even with an amplifier, did not work for me.
Another problem with the current ATSC 1.0 broadcasting system is it's susceptibility to multipath interference. This is the type of freezing/pixelation you get when an airplane flies over. There really isn't any combination of antenna or amplifier that will prevent this, it is a characteristic of ATSC 1.0 digital signals. ATSC 3.0 will solve this problem.
 
The results you get with any antenna are going to have a lot to do with the band you are trying to receive... UHF, VHF-hi (channels 7-13), or VHF-low (channels 2-6). You can't go by the channel number displayed on your TV (virtual channel) because it is often different than channel that they are transmitting on (RF channel). If you have a TV channel or channels that are using VHF-low band RF frequencies you should know that most of the antennas currently on the market will not receive VHF-low band frequencies. It takes a physically larger antenna to receive VHF-low band because the wavelengths are longer. I have this problem where I live, there is one channel (that has 4 sub channels) using channel 5. Because of this I had to go with a larger (and more expensive) outdoor antenna, not because of the distance from the transmitter, but because of this one VHF-low channel that I want to receive. A physically smaller antenna that is not VHF-low reception capable, even with an amplifier, did not work for me.
Another problem with the current ATSC 1.0 broadcasting system is it's susceptibility to multipath interference. This is the type of freezing/pixelation you get when an airplane flies over. There really isn't any combination of antenna or amplifier that will prevent this, it is a characteristic of ATSC 1.0 digital signals. ATSC 3.0 will solve this problem.
Good info. The 1 ft x 1 ft flat indoor wall antennas used on 2 TVs upstairs, and the new attic antenna (RCA Outdoor Yagi, 70 mile range) all get digital channel 11 (VHF-High, 201 MHz) with no problem. Digital channel 11 is the lowest channel these antennas are pulling in for me. The digital channel that's weak is channel 30 (UHF, 560 MHz), but as mentioned in Post #20 it's pulling in other digital channels in the 28 to 33 range with no problems.
 
I have found TV stations broadcast on rf channels 8 through 12, are negatively affected by my laptop's power supply, and is worse when the laptp battery is low and the power supply is feeding more wattage..

To a lesser degree I've found USB chargers and some fan speed controllers can also knock out certain channels in this same range, but more towards 8 or 12

Sometimes it's just the weather, with fog being great and hot and dry being the worst for reception.

An Autoscan performed at sunset sometimes reveals stations i did not know existed, from hundreds of miles away, but they disappear with the sun.

I've got a Tv in my workshop, with an Antenna on an extendable height tarp pole. Height is might is often an expression used, but I have found that when a station is weak, and I raise the antenna a bit more, it gets weaker and lowering it actually allows it to come in.

TVfool dot com shows the rf channels of the virtual channels, their direction and strength from an address or coodinates. I've found that I can twist my antenna a few degrees off to the sides and get the stations from that direction.

Some stations are bizarre, only coming in when I point the antenna 90 degrees to where they are coming from. I often rotate it 180 degrees as I have broadcast towers at 350 and 170 degrees.

What is, and what should be, have been different, often, in my location regarding aiming the antenna, and what stations I should be able to receive, versus what I actually receive. The towers to my north are on Mt wilson up at ~5K' elevation, but are also some 90 miles away and most of the weirdness experienced is from these stations.

The weird parts is that when I have it aimed not in the direction of the towers, but off to the sides, there is nothing there that I can see which is reflecting the signal. It is almost as if the signal is refracting around distant trees, even though they are not line of site from the towers.

My one attempt at signal amplification was unsuccessful, but the product itself suspect and was not ideally at the antenna itself, but somewhere more convenient for testing.
 
Just curious, have you checked TV Fool. they will give you a map based on your address with signal quality and warnings for co channels and they take your antenna height and terrain into account.
 
I have found TV stations broadcast on rf channels 8 through 12, are negatively affected by my laptop's power supply, and is worse when the laptp battery is low and the power supply is feeding more wattage..

To a lesser degree I've found USB chargers and some fan speed controllers can also knock out certain channels in this same range, but more towards 8 or 12

Sometimes it's just the weather, with fog being great and hot and dry being the worst for reception.

An Autoscan performed at sunset sometimes reveals stations i did not know existed, from hundreds of miles away, but they disappear with the sun.

I've got a Tv in my workshop, with an Antenna on an extendable height tarp pole. Height is might is often an expression used, but I have found that when a station is weak, and I raise the antenna a bit more, it gets weaker and lowering it actually allows it to come in.

TVfool dot com shows the rf channels of the virtual channels, their direction and strength from an address or coodinates. I've found that I can twist my antenna a few degrees off to the sides and get the stations from that direction.

Some stations are bizarre, only coming in when I point the antenna 90 degrees to where they are coming from. I often rotate it 180 degrees as I have broadcast towers at 350 and 170 degrees.

What is, and what should be, have been different, often, in my location regarding aiming the antenna, and what stations I should be able to receive, versus what I actually receive. The towers to my north are on Mt wilson up at ~5K' elevation, but are also some 90 miles away and most of the weirdness experienced is from these stations.

The weird parts is that when I have it aimed not in the direction of the towers, but off to the sides, there is nothing there that I can see which is reflecting the signal. It is almost as if the signal is refracting around distant trees, even though they are not line of site from the towers.

My one attempt at signal amplification was unsuccessful, but the product itself suspect and was not ideally at the antenna itself, but somewhere more convenient for testing.
The reason that you are experiencing the "weirdness" with your antenna aiming and signal reception is because of multipath. When you have a highly directional antenna that you have to aim 90 degrees from the transmitter location to get the signal, you are actually receiving a strong signal reflection from something, the reflection is cancelling the direct signal from the transmitter when your antenna is pointed directly at it. This is a major weakness of the ATSC 1.0 digital broadcast system.
 
Just curious, have you checked TV Fool. they will give you a map based on your address with signal quality and warnings for co channels and they take your antenna height and terrain into account.
I'm pretty much getting everything in the red box - the towers are actually closer than I thought. The virtual channel KOMO 4.1 (real channel 38 - red arrow) is the one main channel that comes in weak and cuts out sometimes. I'm getting real channel 16 (PBS, much lower broadcast power) way better than virtual channel 4, so still think I'm just losing too much signal from the splitter and coax length. Virtual channel KOMO 4.1 seemed very sensitive to antenna pointing direction, but even messing with the antenna pointing to find the strongest position it still is borderline signal with the splitter. I still need to go buy a coax union to bypass the splitter - thought I had one around but can't find any.

Signal Analysis (marked up).jpg
 
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That is an old list. After the latest "repack", there are no TV stations using real channel higher than 36. All the TV frequencies that were channel 38 and up have been assigned to other services, mostly LTE.

This page may explain your inconsistent reception of KOMO. There are actually two transmitters one in Seattle and one in Bellevue.
 
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That is an old list. After the latest "repack", there are no TV stations using real channel higher than 36. All the TV frequencies that were channel 38 and up have been assigned to other services, mostly LTE.

This page may explain your inconsistent reception of KOMO. There are actually two transmitters one in Seattle and one in Bellevue.
I reference that web page earlier, and said KOMO 4 was real channel 30. In the old info, it's shown as resl channel 38. I was wondering about the discrepancy.

Regardless, I'm getting other channels (shown in your cirrent info link) with no issues just below and above real channel 30 as mentioned in a previous post.
 
Hard for me to comment from a UK base because we use different TV systems but assuming we are talking about UHF signals my experience is that the no1 priority to improve the signal strength is to replace the cable down lead from the antenna with with double screened satellite quality cable. You can often gain more dB by reducing cable losses than by replacing the antenna. If an amplifier is being used keep the length of down lead before the amplifier as short as possible.
 
I finally got around to by-passing the 1 into 2 splitter by using a coax cable union fitting. It did improve the two weakest channels, but one of them still has weak signal at times. By-passing the splitter should have doubled the signal, so it's probably more of a signal quality vs signal level issue (?). Next move is to just hook-up the coax cable that goes to the main TV directly to the antenna which would remove about 30 ft of coax cable run. Or maybe try a signal amplifier. This OTA antenna stuff can only be tweaked and figured out by trial and error.
 
that 99$ preamp I linked earlier has an app that gives you real time signal.. might help the randomness of trial and error.
 
My broadcast towers for all the majors are around 30 ish miles (keep in mind when we talk miles we are talking straight line, not road miles), I get all the majors with an attic RCA Yogi type antenna that I bought at Lowes for $100. I have it hooked into what used to be our paid cable TV distribution panel along with phone ect.
It distributes to 5 or 6 cable outlets in the home, all 5 or 6 TVs get perfect reception.
I did have one channel that was "iffy" at times, Fox, so I bought a cheap RCA signal boaster in Walmart for $13 or so years ago. I see they still sell them but not directly and the price has gone up. The lead from the attic antenna goes directly to the boaster in the photo and the boaster lead goes to the distribution panel on the upper right side of the photo. We have been pay TV free for over a decade now, never an issue with our setup.
Since I only needed a small boast I did not want to overdrive the signal by getting something too powerful. I get 95 to 100 signal on all TVs (most all 100).
I believe the boaster I bought was RCA AMP1450R
Again, if you just need a small boast dont over do it, most TVs will tell you signal strength of each channel.
Amazon/Walmart might be a good bet because you can return it.
This is my setup = (I dont think its still dirty like in the photo *L*)
View attachment 65038View attachment 65039View attachment 65040
That attic construction looks really overbuilt. I have seen many houses and never saw anything this strong
The results you get with any antenna are going to have a lot to do with the band you are trying to receive... UHF, VHF-hi (channels 7-13), or VHF-low (channels 2-6). You can't go by the channel number displayed on your TV (virtual channel) because it is often different than channel that they are transmitting on (RF channel). If you have a TV channel or channels that are using VHF-low band RF frequencies you should know that most of the antennas currently on the market will not receive VHF-low band frequencies. It takes a physically larger antenna to receive VHF-low band because the wavelengths are longer. I have this problem where I live, there is one channel (that has 4 sub channels) using channel 5. Because of this I had to go with a larger (and more expensive) outdoor antenna, not because of the distance from the transmitter, but because of this one VHF-low channel that I want to receive. A physically smaller antenna that is not VHF-low reception capable, even with an amplifier, did not work for me.
Another problem with the current ATSC 1.0 broadcasting system is it's susceptibility to multipath interference. This is the type of freezing/pixelation you get when an airplane flies over. There really isn't any combination of antenna or amplifier that will prevent this, it is a characteristic of ATSC 1.0 digital signals. ATSC 3.0 will solve this problem.
Good point. Are any antennas tuneable- electrically match antenna size to frequency?
 
Are any antennas tuneable- electrically match antenna size to frequency?
A few larger traditional outdoor antennas have (or used to have) the means to optimize the reception (gain) of either VHF low or VHF high band signals by changing the orientation of active VHF elements relative to the beam (angled/V-shaped or perpendicular/straight).
There was some talk years ago about "smart" antenna amplifiers that could be tuned to provide optimal amplification of the individual channel frequencies based upon which channel is being viewed, but I don't know if they were ever developed/marketed, and I have never actually seen one. They may have realized that this sort of thing wouldn't be helpful in the real world because of ATSC 1.0's problem with multipath interference (which can't be overcome with an amplifier).
 
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That attic construction looks really overbuilt. I have seen many houses and never saw anything this strong

I wish it was something special but its just standard attic truss construction used by many new home builders.
With that said it is supposed to be very strong and I’m sure different builders have different quality construction standards so maybe we got something a little better?
The lumber itself seems to be a good grade. Not seen in the photo is that it is a very large attic broken into three sections for what reason I don’t know and fire rated sheathing between the sections.
The floor is the same between all three sections but the roofline is different
 
I wish it was something special but its just standard attic truss construction used by many new home builders.
With that said it is supposed to be very strong and I’m sure different builders have different quality construction standards so maybe we got something a little better?
The lumber itself seems to be a good grade. Not seen in the photo is that it is a very large attic broken into three sections for what reason I don’t know and fire rated sheathing between the sections.
The floor is the same between all three sections but the roofline is different
We were shopping for a new house up here in snowy Pa. Those homes have to deal with massive snow loads, and the roof structure is not as strong as yours. Reputable builders, too
 
A few larger traditional outdoor antennas have (or used to have) the means to optimize the reception (gain) of either VHF low or VHF high band signals by changing the orientation of active VHF elements relative to the beam (angled/V-shaped or perpendicular/straight).
There was some talk years ago about "smart" antenna amplifiers that could be tuned to provide optimal amplification of the individual channel frequencies based upon which channel is being viewed, but I don't know if they were ever developed/marketed, and I have never actually seen one. They may have realized that this sort of thing wouldn't be helpful in the real world because of ATSC 1.0's problem with multipath interference (which can't be overcome with an amplifier).
Thank you-
Maybe I'm confused. My cheap Walmart amplified rabbit ears have an adjustable control that matches the physical size of the antenna to the channel frequency (wavelength) by changing its electrical resonance to a corresponding "pretend" physical length. In shortwave listening, receivers have an "antenna gain" user control to better match the intended frequency. Since impedance is frequency dependent, this control tries to match impedance of the antenna at the given frequency to the receiver and get a better signal transfer. I hope I got this right!
 
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