Experienced installers please read...

My purpose of doing this installation is to pick up HDTV broadcasts about 45 miles away in Sacramento, CA:

Purchase and mount a Winegard HD8200U antenna on the top of a 50 foot tall pine tree with a Winegard AP8275 pre-amplifier, then run RG11 from the amp near 200 feet down and around to the house where it meets a grounding block. The cable will terminate at a splitter where it will then feed out about 30 feet each via RG6 to 2 televisions.

Is my proposed installation plan ideally built with the best products? How can I improve upon this plan to bring better reception to my televisions while still providing the look of a professional install?

Your professional help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Hello SultanOfSlack,

While I am not a professional installer I think I can get the ball rolling here. The RG-11 may pay dividends at a 200' run, but...

The first issue that needs to be addressed is the choice of mounting the antenna in a pine tree. While this will give you plenty of height, trees sway in the wind, and in order to lock onto a digital signal the antenna needs to be stationary - see the problem?;)

Running a generic report for Sacramento shows several VHF-Low transmissions, however no one can say if the 8200U is the best choice or not without first seeing an exact address TVFool report, and knowing which you are actually closest to, determining which may be duplicates and not worth bothering with, etc. You may be better served with a smaller antenna designed for UHF/VHF-High.

You may also be served well with a rotor...

Same goes for the amp, if you have too strong a signal on some stations at your exact location you may need an amp with a higher resistance to overload.

Place to start is run an exact address report on TVFool and post a link. Just copy & paste and leave out the www.tvfool.com part and we'll get to it. Also, your exact address doesn't show so your privacy is protected.

The power injector for the pre amp should be mounted as close to the splitter as possible to minimize loss.

You might have some issues with 230' of rotor cable - too small of a cable - wire will cause the wire to act like a toaster and will not have enough power to turn the rotor properly..

I would not advise mounting a antenna in a pine tree - for the same reasons as Hooper explained to you.

If your stations were all UHF - you could cheat a little and just mount it on the side of your house or nearer to the ground.

You probably don't need a 8200U if you have no stations 2 - 6, but it probably helps if you do have stations 7 - 10.

1. I would never consider mounting an antenna in a tree. Besides I wouldn't want to go through all the trouble trying to access it again (when the preamp takes a hit, when the fittings go bad, etc.,
2. Any gain from height seems to be lost with the long feedline,

1. I would never consider mounting an antenna in a tree. Besides I wouldn't want to go through all the trouble trying to access it again (when the preamp takes a hit, when the fittings go bad, etc.,
2. Any gain from height seems to be lost with the long feedline,

For analog signals it works well. Back in the early 1980's I had a friend mount a Rat Shack V-185 VHF only on the top of a 60 foot maple tree in my backyard in Connecticut. I lived about 17 miles NW of Hartford in a hilly area no less. Despite the disadvantages of the hilly terrain in New England, I was able to get a pretty good picture from the VHF channels in Providence (6, 10, 12) and then 4 and 5 out of Bawston. 2 from Boston got wiped out by 3 from Hartford and 7 was not really watchable due to a weak signal and interference from 8 in New Haven. Once in a while 11 from Durham, NH would be watchable. And when 3 in Hartford would sign off I could watch WCAU 3 from Philly. No real NY reception though because the mountains sw of our home blocked those channels.

Thank you aka.Hooper, JB Antennaman, and videobruce for your replies. Please see the attached tvfool report. I gathered the general consensus is unfavorable in regard to mounting the antenna on top of a pine tree, however I believe in doing so would be the cheapest and easiest method -as to erect a stilt to mount the antenna would be redundant being there are many rooted already. The specimen tree is a slash pine that has branches at the appropriate levels for easy climbing. Let me add to my rationale for the tree; at the top I was able to see over the tree tops into the Sacramento basin via line of sight.

Please advise of stabler methods of attaining the height of about 50 feet, but let it be known that my house is a single level with its gable at 17 feet high.

Being that the rotor wire will be about 230 feet long, what AWG cable would be necessary to power the rotor unit?

To SultanOfSlack,

I can see that there may be some advantages to a tree install, all the free height, but they may be more than well be off set by the huge cable run.

Fortunately for you, TVFool is made for answering questions like yours.
Simply run the same TVFool report, and input a height of 25 feet. And then you can compare the two reports and see how much your signals drop. If the drop is not huge, you are probably better off trying a roof install.

Being that the rotor wire will be about 230 feet long, what AWG cable would be necessary to power the rotor unit?

I've got my rotator 500 feet from my house and it works fine with 14gauge wire. I knew that the 22 gauge wire that came with it would have too much voltage drop with a 500 foot run. So, I just bought a roll of direct-burial, Romex type AC wire, 14/2 UF. If you wanted to spend the extra money, you could buy 14/3 UF, but it's not necessary. 14/2 comes with three 14 gauge copper wires, two insulated and one bare. I put a water-proof junction box at each end, and join the 14 gauge UF Romex to the more flexible and smaller 20 gauge wire at each end for ease of installation to the dinky little terminals in the rotator and control box.

Proper wire size depends on amp draw versus wire length (and conductivity/ampacity of the wire itself), period. My Channel Master rotator gives specs showing a max run of 180' feet with standard 22 gauge copper wire and 280 feet with 20 gauge copper wire. It does not give amperage draw specs or wire gauge for longer runs. If it did, you could just caculate an acceptable 10 % max voltage drop and calculate any wire run.

So, I just installed the 14 gauge wire and know it is more than enough at 500 feet. I checked voltage at the rotator while being used, and it runs around 17.5 plus volts which is high. An 18 volt motor system is usually designed to work down to a 20% drop, so the rotator would probably still work fine at 15 volts (a 12 volt starter in a car is designed to crank at 9 volts). One issue though with wire too small would be a larger voltage drop in cold weather when the motor first starts. You need adequate wire to offset the start surge, or you might get a motor that cannot get started when things are tough.

Channel Master gives the following specs for their rotator and wire.
22 gauge copper wire a max of 180 feet.
20 gauge copper wire a max run of 280 feet.
18 gauge copper wire a max run of 445 feet.

Also note that if you use four conductor cable instead of three, and tie two wires together for the power feed, you can increase as thus:
22 gauge copper to 200 feet
20 gauge to 310 feet
18 gauge to 510 feet.

On the subject of mounting your antenna in a tree . . . sounds OK except when the wind blows. A tree top waving back and forth in the wind is not great for reception (I've done it).

There's an old house I drive by once in awhile that has a huge white pine tree with a house built around it. It comes out through the center of the roof, and it too once had an antenna on it. The tree died however, probably because the root-area was covered by the house. Now the guy has a big problem. I'd hate to be the person repsonsible for trying to take down that tree that comes out the center of the roof.

Looking at your TVFool.com report, you really don't need that amount of altitude that the tree will give you, and the debits outweigh the benefits of the added altitude that the tree will provide. You are in a suburban-near-fringe reception area, and a good-quality VHF-high-band plus UHF antenna will serve you just fine. I would be looking at the Winegard HD-7697p plus perhaps a high-input preamplifier like a Winegard HDP-269 if you plan to run multiple TV sets.