[david_marvin]

Need a recommendation on antenna selection and design. I would like to get signal from towers in Baltimore (North-Northeast) and Washington DC (Southwest) 120-130 degrees apart. As a bonus, would like Annapolis towers (but, if not possible I can get PBS from Washington DC ). I am seeing atleast 4 High-VHF with more coming probably.

Is it better to go with two joined/combined unidirectional antennas (UHF and High-V)? If so, what do you recommend for an attic installation in my location? Or, a single bowtie style, multidirectional better and point it half way between Baltimore and DC (like 280 degrees)?

The attic is above 2nd story (about 25-30ft or so above ground). Lots of room available; large space most of width of house.

TVFool
http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id=60ed432cc113e1

Vinyl siding, plywood, tyvec, HVAC in attic

Sending signal to a HDHomeRun and 3 TVs. 50 ft from antenna in attic to splitter in a smartpanel (via conduit from attic to basement), and another 50 ft from the splitter to the furthest TV.

I was thinking a 2 antenna design with very short equal length coax to a combiner, then into a pre-amp. Then put a signal boost in the basement at the splitter. What combiner/joiner is best for this? What else should I be thinking about?

 

[Trip in VA]

Hello, fellow DC-area resident! I'm in Alexandria.

You're in a good signal area. TVFool is currently having issues, but there's a lot that can be deduced from what we do have.

WMPT or WMPB will get you Maryland PBS. Neither appears on the list, but WMPT is co-located with the much weaker WQAW-LD. (Add at least 20 dB to WQAW-LD.) WMPB is in Baltimore, but is not co-located with the other Baltimore stations (it's on the northwest side of town) so you can't compare it to one of the other signals on the list. In any case, Maryland PBS should be doable one way or the other, and I'm betting it won't be a struggle. Also not shown are WMAR (comparable to WJZ/WBAL/WBFF/WNUV), plus WRC and WPXW (comparable to WFDC and WHUT respectively, though both of the former will be stronger than both of the latter).

WIAV-CD is probably the weakest signal that could be of interest or will still be on the air six months from now, assuming that Daystar religious programming is not of interest to you. If religious, home shopping, and foreign language programming is unimportant, that will probably knock out everything below WETA except that Retro TV is on WWTD-LD.

You may be able to get away with something small. I would argue for starting small with a single antenna and going up from there. I'll let the antenna experts take over from here.

- Trip