Antenna Tower - is it worth it to mad man?

jdv

Hey all - just discovered this forum last week. Gave up Comcast 3 months ago and never looked back. Built a GH antenna and a bow-tie plus a RCA "normal" roof antenna - all of which provides my friends with a great deal of amusement (and lots of jokes about living in the 1950's). Something very satisfying about building something that works and very satisfying not having to pay 100 bucks a month to a rude company. Also oddly satisfying about doing things "old skool."

All that said, I'm a fiend for stations. I live in Ypsilanti, which is some 35 miles away from Detroit. With my 3 antenna's I'm getting most of the "obvious" stations - Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC, Ion, Toledo, and 2 Canadian stations. When I aim my RCA towards Lansing, I can get 2 stations... so all in all, not bad.

But here's the thing - I can't get WADL, a local indie station based in Detroit. They show a lot of shows I dig and it's frustrating as hell not getting this station. I also can't get Fox in Lansing (which is important to me b/c they show Detroit Lions games, which are normally blacked-out locally - pity me, I'm a Lions fan).

The problem with where I live is that we're down in a valley, one of the lowest points in the state - essentially a two mile wide bowl. It's great for not getting tornados, but not so great for getting signals. My main antenna is some 30 feet off of the ground, as far as I can practically get it up w/o some sort of tower.

Is something like a 50 tower/mast worth the cost (which I have no idea how much)? I have no plans of ever paying for cable again, so I figure any money spent is well spent as long as I get more stations.

Any comments or help would be very much appreciated - thanks again for this forum.

john

EscapeVelocity

Antenna Towers also add value to your real estate/house as improvement.

tigerbangs

You will gain approx 3dB gain for every 30 additional feet of atitude that you achieve, minus any extra line losses incurred, which can be overcome by a preamplifier. 50" towers usually run between $1000 to $1500 installed, so only you can determine whether an additional 20' of altitude will help you. My first thought is to replace the GH home-built with a high-gain yagi like an AntennasDirect XG-91 and tilt the antenna up at the front about 20 degrees to take advantage of any refracted signal that may come from the edge of your surrounding hills.

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aka.Hooper

Hi John and welcome to the forum!

An intermediate option between your 30' mount and a full blown tower (that'll set you back more than a few) is a telescoping mast with guy wires - may be something to consider.
(Probably easier to install too.)

I'll assume you're currently mounted to the house - sometimes adjusting horizontal location in addition to height can make a big difference also. TVFool is a great tool; go on to the TV Maps function and play with the position as well as the height to get an idea of possible improvement in alternate spots on your property. (Of course keeping in mind the tree factor.)

How much gain you get for the height varies with location. For instance at my house I don't see too significant an improvement up to 35', but at 40' I get quite a jump.

Once you settle on the best location/height compromise post your TVFool and the knowledgeable folks on here will help you analyze the antenna/amp requirements.

Hope this helps!

PS I also am becoming addicted to the home-grown variety!
When you did the G-H did you do a reflector screen or collinear rods?

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http://mysite.verizon.net/res11d41p/

jdv

Could/should I combine it with my RCA antenna? Right now I have the GH combined with RCA. The GH is aimed at Ann Arbor - it essentially is for one station, Ion - as everything else seems to be East or South of my location (excepting Lansing of course).

Thanks for the help...

john

otaota

Use the interactive maps at TV Fool (http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=90). Once a map of your location is on the screen, you can enter different antenna heights (the channel list will automatically update). Try different heights (e.g., 30, 50, 100) and see how much difference it makes in the NM values.

If you are just inside the edge of a terrain shadow, then some added height can make a huge difference. If the terrain shadow (or Earth curvature) puts the line-of-sight signal WAY over your head (i.e., 1000s of feet), then adding an extra 20 feet will make almost no difference at all. TV Fool accounts for the terrain and Earth curvature, so it's a quick way to get a feel for what your potential gains might be.

Cheers,

__________________
Chuck

jdv

Cool... TvFool is the shizzle. Tigerbangs recommended the XG-91 - I'm guessing this is one of the top-of-the-line antennas.

Looks like Target carries it - but will it perfrom better than the RCA "60 mile" antenna I already have?

"PS I also am becoming addicted to the home-grown variety!
When you did the G-H did you do a reflector screen or collinear rods?"

Reflector screen. The GH is cool, but the sucker is huge and heavy, making it very hard to get up in the air. It's on a camera tripod now on my roof. Works well enough, but not better than the RCA...

john

JB Antennaman

My uneducated guess would be that you need to move out of the bowl and onto flat lands.

Someplace as far away from high power lines and other neighbors as you can get.

Look at the location of all the transmitters and find a spot that is in between all the stations you wish to receive.

Get rid of all the junk you accumulated and buy one or two good antenna's and some sort of pre amp - to compensate for line loss between the antenna and the televisions.

WADL - http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?facid=455
1000 Kw. Ch 39

WSYM - http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?facid=74094
933 Kw. Ch 38

I would guess two signals coming from two different directions with about the same amount of transmit power on adjacent channels causes as much problems as it does anything else.

My other guess is that you do not have a antenna rotor, since you said that you have one antenna pointed in one direction to pick up one station.

Two XG 91's tied together with a good pre amp would probably be even better then one. Along with a good antenna rotor.

Maybe Tigerbangs can tell you the best way to tie them both together and amplify them.

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NonMcTubber

I tend to agree with a composite of the responses.

Our OP has some channels he would like to get but does not. Which means he needs to get a better signal at his location and know something about the missing channels.

Extra signal strength can be gained by an antenna with a higher gain, but an XG-91 is primarily a UHF antenna and we don't know if the missing channels are on VHF. So some sort of good VHF antenna may be also needed. Or just one really good combo VHF/UHF antenna. Then a antenna rotor may be needed to get best on aim gain, more antenna height may or may not help, and then there is the various amplifier and coax run questions. And we also need to know if there are nearby trees you aim the antenna through.

Without an exact address TVFool report and its difficult to say more.
With an exact address TVFool report at 30 and 50 feet, it should be possible to guestimate what will get you the best bang for the buck, even if the OP gets honestly told there is little hope of always getting some subset of his desired channels.

And things like 60 mile antenna range ratings are almost worthless puffery, and because you are terrain challenged, it may be a deep fringe reception question with Tigerbangs being a resident expert on that question.

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But knowledge is power and HD does have some potential to increase content variety and choices.

rinardman

If the area you live in is anything like the area I live in, there are numerous TV towers standing unused because the owner has gone to satellite, or cable. And, if you are handy, and can do the tower work yourself, you can probably get a used 50 foot tower up for a few hundred dollars, including a new paint job on the tower.

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60+ miles out

What, me worry?

Wally

I put an ad in the paper looking for a television tower. I had about 14 phone calls. I looked at six, and finally purchased one that had 3 eight foot sections for $60. The mast is triangular in shape. I then added a 8 foot pole for $15. Several people told me I could just have their tower as they were not using them anymore.

If you want to go higher than 30 feet, just state it in your ad.

ciscopower

I don't think so. The radiancy of it would hurt human being's body.

jdv

Thanks for the suggestions. The RCA is on a rotor/tied to the chimney. Besides being in the bowl that is Ypsilanti, there are several big trees (naturally exactly in the direction where most of the stations are). I'll be interested in seeing if I can pick up better reception when the leaves fall off, which should be in about 2 more weeks given the unseasonably cold weather Michigan has gotten.

Good idea about putting an ad in the paper/craigslist for a tower...

And I use an old radioshack pre-amp.

john

Billiam

Non sequitur.

Tower Guy

The advantages of a tower are best judged by the use of tvfool.com; one at your existing height and another at a proposed tower height.

The advantages of tilting up a 91XG varies from location to location. It depends on the angle to the hilltops. You can aim the antenna directly at a nearby hill, or lower the antenna until the interaction with the ground raises the radiation angle to that same inclination. If you have no trees or buildings in the way, the latter is more likely to get you the strongest signal.

If the tower height calculations from tvfool are inconclusive and lowering the antenna doesn't help, it's time to find the sweet spot with your existing antenna. Old time installers called it "walking the roof." It's in chapter 3 here:

http://www.starkelectronic.com/cmig.htm

This explains why it works:

http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/siting.html