willscary
06-20-09, 10:27 AM
I dropped cable 2 years ago and went OTA. I planned a tower, but my wife didn't like the idea and I live on the west side of a hill where all of my large trees have been hit by lightning, so there was a bit of fear also.
I installed a UHF antenna in the attic of my century + old 2 story farmhouse. The nearest local stations are 38 miles away on the east side of the hill I live on. The antenna was about 10' below the top of the hill's terrain and perhaps 100' below the tops of the mature trees about 300 yards from my property.
My signal was OK. I had a signal 80-95% of the time depending on the channel. When I did get a solid video signal, I would hear digital audio noise that soulded like a quick high pitched blip.
I have a 2nd market to the northwest about 60 miles away. I added another UHF antenna to my attic and combined them with equal lengths of RG6 QS and a quality splitter/combiner. The stations to the northwest came in just as well as the stations to the east, which now came in with a bit less quality than they originally had.
Thanksgiving week I constructed a tower. I dug a hole 36" X 36" X 48" deep next to my house. I filled the bottom 8" of the hole with sand for drainage. I installed (3) 10' sections of Rohn 25G + a 9' top section. The tower was centered in the hole and the tower legs were buried 2" into the sand at the bottom of the hole. I attached the tower to my house 21' above grade, then poured 1-1/3 yards of concrete into the hole and 6" above grade creating a 3 ton anchor encased in dirt for my tower.
I rented a boom lift for 4 hours on a Saturday ($100) and installed a 10' high mast (9' above the tower top) with a 91XG at the top followed by a Funke psp.1922 at 7' below the 91XG. I dropped the leads to a CM 7777 amplifier and ran the single output cable down to a grounding block prior to entering the house.
The grounding block AND THE TOWER were both grounded using 6ga copper run to a 10' copper ground rod driven into the dirt just a foot away from the base. This ground rod was also bonded to the main electrical ground rod about 15' away through a 4ga copper wire. The antennas were aimed per TV Fool (one for UHF and the other for a future VHF channel). The tower is tall enough that the 91XG is 12' above the terrain at the top of the hill and the Funke is 5' higher than the terrain. This does not get me above the trees on the hill, but it worked. I now get a full signal at all times. There are no dropouts or digital audio defects at all in any weather!
Success! (sort of!)
In February, all of the stations to the northwest transitioned to digital only and took their final allotments. I bought a channel 31 jointenna and began a project to get the Fox station to the northwest. I used one of the attic UHF antennas (Antennacraft MXU59) and pointed it at the Fox station from inside my attic. Using a 3' run of RG6 QS, the antenna output is amplified by a Winegard 8275 and sent through the attic and 2 floors to the basement. I use a jointenna to couple the indoor and outdoor signals right after the power inserters for both amps.
From the Jointenna output, there is a short (3') RG6 QS into a 3 way splitter. From the splitter, there are runs of about 30-50' of quad shield going to each of 3 TVs.
Again, perfect signal at all TVs at all times.
I then added a second Funke to the tower and pointed it northwest. I joined it to the first Funke using a channel 11 Jointenna and ran the jointenna output into the VHF side of the tower mounted CM 7777. This added channels 7 and 9 from the northwest to my local channel 11 to the east. Reception on all channels is over 93% at all times with no breakups, dropouts or audio problems on any channel!
Yesterday my Blonder Tongue antenna for channel 14-19 arrived. It is small and I will mounte it to the tower and point it north, attempting to receive channel 16 from 92 miles away. I am awaiting a channel 16 jointenna. This may or may not work due to distance, but I am hopeful.
Overall, I have invested nearly $1,800 into antennas, amps, Jointennas, tower pieces, concrete, cabling, grounding and splitting. This is a lot of money, but I have saved over $2,700 in cable bills. I have lost my cable channels and only get local OTA from 2 markets, BUT...we have found a lot of good, clean shows on network and public TV. We always watched the cable channels, but now have found that OTA TV offers a lot and we do not miss the cable channels.
The best part is that our TV is now free and we are not encumbered by monthly cable bills. We get a much better selection than the $20/month "basic lifeline" cable offers and we get it in a better quality and mostly HD signal.
I recently purchased a DTVPal DVR that works only on OTA signals. My unit has functioned flawlessly. This means that now we get the OTA signal plus, when we want to, we can record a show while watching another program. If we are not around, we can record 2 programs at the same time.
My wife says I am obsessed with this OTA thing. She may be correct, but she and the kids both love our current setup!
Bill
I installed a UHF antenna in the attic of my century + old 2 story farmhouse. The nearest local stations are 38 miles away on the east side of the hill I live on. The antenna was about 10' below the top of the hill's terrain and perhaps 100' below the tops of the mature trees about 300 yards from my property.
My signal was OK. I had a signal 80-95% of the time depending on the channel. When I did get a solid video signal, I would hear digital audio noise that soulded like a quick high pitched blip.
I have a 2nd market to the northwest about 60 miles away. I added another UHF antenna to my attic and combined them with equal lengths of RG6 QS and a quality splitter/combiner. The stations to the northwest came in just as well as the stations to the east, which now came in with a bit less quality than they originally had.
Thanksgiving week I constructed a tower. I dug a hole 36" X 36" X 48" deep next to my house. I filled the bottom 8" of the hole with sand for drainage. I installed (3) 10' sections of Rohn 25G + a 9' top section. The tower was centered in the hole and the tower legs were buried 2" into the sand at the bottom of the hole. I attached the tower to my house 21' above grade, then poured 1-1/3 yards of concrete into the hole and 6" above grade creating a 3 ton anchor encased in dirt for my tower.
I rented a boom lift for 4 hours on a Saturday ($100) and installed a 10' high mast (9' above the tower top) with a 91XG at the top followed by a Funke psp.1922 at 7' below the 91XG. I dropped the leads to a CM 7777 amplifier and ran the single output cable down to a grounding block prior to entering the house.
The grounding block AND THE TOWER were both grounded using 6ga copper run to a 10' copper ground rod driven into the dirt just a foot away from the base. This ground rod was also bonded to the main electrical ground rod about 15' away through a 4ga copper wire. The antennas were aimed per TV Fool (one for UHF and the other for a future VHF channel). The tower is tall enough that the 91XG is 12' above the terrain at the top of the hill and the Funke is 5' higher than the terrain. This does not get me above the trees on the hill, but it worked. I now get a full signal at all times. There are no dropouts or digital audio defects at all in any weather!
Success! (sort of!)
In February, all of the stations to the northwest transitioned to digital only and took their final allotments. I bought a channel 31 jointenna and began a project to get the Fox station to the northwest. I used one of the attic UHF antennas (Antennacraft MXU59) and pointed it at the Fox station from inside my attic. Using a 3' run of RG6 QS, the antenna output is amplified by a Winegard 8275 and sent through the attic and 2 floors to the basement. I use a jointenna to couple the indoor and outdoor signals right after the power inserters for both amps.
From the Jointenna output, there is a short (3') RG6 QS into a 3 way splitter. From the splitter, there are runs of about 30-50' of quad shield going to each of 3 TVs.
Again, perfect signal at all TVs at all times.
I then added a second Funke to the tower and pointed it northwest. I joined it to the first Funke using a channel 11 Jointenna and ran the jointenna output into the VHF side of the tower mounted CM 7777. This added channels 7 and 9 from the northwest to my local channel 11 to the east. Reception on all channels is over 93% at all times with no breakups, dropouts or audio problems on any channel!
Yesterday my Blonder Tongue antenna for channel 14-19 arrived. It is small and I will mounte it to the tower and point it north, attempting to receive channel 16 from 92 miles away. I am awaiting a channel 16 jointenna. This may or may not work due to distance, but I am hopeful.
Overall, I have invested nearly $1,800 into antennas, amps, Jointennas, tower pieces, concrete, cabling, grounding and splitting. This is a lot of money, but I have saved over $2,700 in cable bills. I have lost my cable channels and only get local OTA from 2 markets, BUT...we have found a lot of good, clean shows on network and public TV. We always watched the cable channels, but now have found that OTA TV offers a lot and we do not miss the cable channels.
The best part is that our TV is now free and we are not encumbered by monthly cable bills. We get a much better selection than the $20/month "basic lifeline" cable offers and we get it in a better quality and mostly HD signal.
I recently purchased a DTVPal DVR that works only on OTA signals. My unit has functioned flawlessly. This means that now we get the OTA signal plus, when we want to, we can record a show while watching another program. If we are not around, we can record 2 programs at the same time.
My wife says I am obsessed with this OTA thing. She may be correct, but she and the kids both love our current setup!
Bill