A couple of months ago y'all helped me pick the right equipment to put up for fringe reception 60 miles from most of the towers. The vertically-stacked 91XG and YA-1713 are working very well, even with no amplification at all...usually.
This morning we had what I assume were atmospheric conditions that caused severe freezing and pixelating on some of those channels. What usually came in at 75-80% signal strength turned into 30s and 40s. Within a couple hours it was back to normal signal levels. But it reminded me that I wanted to try a CM7777 preamp I found ridiculously cheap a couple weeks ago.
When I first installed it using combined UHF/VHF, I got no signal anywhere. Suspecting overloading on one channel (27, about 8 miles away), I changed the settings to separate UHF/VHF and only connected the VHF. The idea was to make sure this equipment worked and give me better reason to suspect overloading. I did notice considerably better VHF signal strength on 13 with the preamp in place.
One last test had me connect the UHF as a separate lead into the preamp. The VHF was still strong, but the UHF had mostly really low readings in the 30s and 40s and some I was getting before had no signal. The one nearby station had its own signal strength drop into the 50s. This test (with separate VHF/UHF inputs) was better than when I used combined input for UHF/VHF through a UVSJ into the preamp, but still pretty bad.
My guess is overloading on 27, for which I'm thinking a jointenna on 27 would be the next thing to try. I'd take the UHF from the 91XG into the jointenna to attenuate 27 and then into the UHF input to the CM7777. Does it sound like I'm on the right track here? TVFool info is below (current, not post-transition), and note that the programming on 21 and 27 are identical:
This morning we had what I assume were atmospheric conditions that caused severe freezing and pixelating on some of those channels. What usually came in at 75-80% signal strength turned into 30s and 40s. Within a couple hours it was back to normal signal levels. But it reminded me that I wanted to try a CM7777 preamp I found ridiculously cheap a couple weeks ago.
When I first installed it using combined UHF/VHF, I got no signal anywhere. Suspecting overloading on one channel (27, about 8 miles away), I changed the settings to separate UHF/VHF and only connected the VHF. The idea was to make sure this equipment worked and give me better reason to suspect overloading. I did notice considerably better VHF signal strength on 13 with the preamp in place.
One last test had me connect the UHF as a separate lead into the preamp. The VHF was still strong, but the UHF had mostly really low readings in the 30s and 40s and some I was getting before had no signal. The one nearby station had its own signal strength drop into the 50s. This test (with separate VHF/UHF inputs) was better than when I used combined input for UHF/VHF through a UVSJ into the preamp, but still pretty bad.
My guess is overloading on 27, for which I'm thinking a jointenna on 27 would be the next thing to try. I'd take the UHF from the 91XG into the jointenna to attenuate 27 and then into the UHF input to the CM7777. Does it sound like I'm on the right track here? TVFool info is below (current, not post-transition), and note that the programming on 21 and 27 are identical:
