Howdy. A rank newbie here needing some advice. I wish I'd found this forum before ordering my antenna, but I think it'll be ok. The antenna I ordered is a Winegard 7082P, it will be up in the air about 20', and there will be roughly a 100' coax run with a grounding connector inserted at it's midpoint. My question is whether I need to get a pre-amp.

We don't have a digital, much less a HD set in the house, but within the next year we will be purchasing one. Our primary set is a 31" Sony crt that's 12-13 years old...great picture, but non-HD. Naturally, I will not be able to test the antenna for digital until we get the new set, but I figure if I can get high-grade analog reception going I'll have a head-start on getting good digital reception.

Our location sits on a nice hill in south Alabama with most of our local transmitters coming from the north of us. Currently we're using a little (4.5'?) vhf/uhf antenna that has something like 4 vhf elements and 8 or so uhf elements along with 4 reflectors. The antenna actually does pretty good.

Below is the result from my antennaweb query. With the small antenna we receive channels 2, 12, 32, 4, 20, and 8 very good...reception from some of the stations actually seem to equal our satellite receiver's quality. Channel 67 comes in with bad snow and channel 22/CW (not listed) comes in with light snow.

The pre-amp that I'm considering is the Winegard AP-8700 but I'm wondering if I need a pre-amp at all...I think the 100' coax run is what is nudging me towards getting one. Any suggestions or recommendations are definitely appreciated since I'm not really sure what I'm doing here!

Thanks! Ed

yellow - vhf WDIQ 2 PBS DOZIER AL 192° 12.6 2
*green - vhf WDIQ-DT 2.1 PBS DOZIER AL 192° 12.6 11
red - vhf WSFA 12 NBC MONTGOMERY AL 36° 20.2 12
*blue - uhf WSFA-DT 12.1 NBC MONTGOMERY AL 36° 20.1 14
blue - uhf WRJM 67 MNT TROY AL 36° 20.2 67
blue - uhf WNCF 32 ABC MONTGOMERY AL 323° 36.4 32
blue - vhf WTVY 4 CBS DOTHAN AL 149° 66.8 4
blue - uhf WCOV 20 FOX MONTGOMERY AL 36° 20.1 20
blue - uhf WAIQ 26 PBS MONTGOMERY AL 7° 44.9 26
blue - vhf WAKA 8 CBS SELMA AL 321° 38.0 8
*violet - uhf WAKA-DT 8.1 CBS SELMA AL 321° 38.0 55
*violet - uhf WBIH-DT 29 IND SELMA AL 335° 62.7 29

I have the Winegard PR8800, using the Channelmaster CM0264 amp. I recommend the same amp for you because as you now realize the antenna you chose may not be the preferred choice for digital.

Reasons:
1-the CM0264 has 300 ohm inputs that match the antenna (no need for a balun)
2-the CM0264 has 2 inputs and you may consider adding another antenna in the future. The CM0064 has only one input which would match your 7082 nicely, but the two amps are roughly the same price and 0264 can be set to a single antenna by a switch inside the mast-mounted preamp.
3-the channel master amps has very low noise ratings which in my opinion are just as important as overall gain.

If you want a 75 ohm preamp then the CM7777 is the choice, but I have one as well and despite a higher rated gain the 0264 outperms it because it is a 300 ohm amp

hop this is helpful

Thanks for the feedback, Dewey TO.

I may be getting confused here. The 7082P has a 75 ohm connector. It appears that there must already be a balun or matching circuit of some sort inside the "cartridge" of the 7082P allowing the antenna to connect directly to a 75 ohm coax cable. If I want to use a pre-amp that has a 300 ohm input am I correct in thinking that I would have to insert a balun between the antenna "cartridge" coax connection and the 300 ohm pre-amp? Or, is the 7082P designed so that it can directly feed into a 300 ohm pre-amp?

In looking at the Channel Master pre-amps it looks like the 0068-DSB would be a model that would connect to the 75 ohm connection of the 7082P with no problems. It (the 0068) has the same specs as the 0264 and the 0064. The 7777 would connect easily with the 7082P antenna but it looks like it is backordered everywhere (maybe discontinued?).

Thanks for getting me to look at the CM pre-amps...looks like I can get a bit more punch from them than the Winegard 8700 that I was looking at and with less noise...especially in regards to UHF.

Ed