Baffled by poor reception

[ayti]

I live in zip code 53705. I live two miles from one television transmitter tower and four miles from another. They are separated by roughly 21 degrees and I can see one of the towers from my roof. The other is hidden by a hill. There is roughly 75' of coax between the TV and the antenna and the signal passes through two grounding blocks, as well.

My television is in the basement of my home and rabbit ears and a UHF loop gave us extremely poor results. Recently I installed a Winegard GS-1100 on my house to improve my HDTV reception. Initially, I mounted this on the side of my house, roughly seven feet off the ground and this meant that all the local channels could be tuned in, most of the time, without problems. However, four of the channels (all on one tower, the one behind the hill) would occasionally lose enough signal to cause receptions problems.

This weekend, I moved the antenna up to the top of the house, which improved reception for the channels I already had no problems receiving, but did nothing for the four channels on the tower behind the hill.

Installing a mast tall enough to see over the hill is impractical, so I'm left wondering what else I can do to improve my reception. I hesitate to use a powered antenna because I'm already so close to the transmitters. Does anyone here have any suggestions?

[winegard]

Good morning ayti,

You may have to try several locations on the roof to see if you can find a spot where all channels will come in. when moving the antenna around also try raising and lowering it. The hill may present such a problem that no matter what you do you may never receive a prefect picture. Adding an amplifier will not help because amplifiers can only amplify and build up signals given to it by the antenna, they can not pull in signals or extend the range of the antenna.

Since all of your TV stations in Madison are now using a real UHF channel to broadcast their digital signal on you might want to try a Winegard HD-4400 UHF antenna which has a larger UHF collection capability then the GS-1100 antenna. Can you give us your exact address and possibly we can be more accurate in determining a solution for you.

[winegard]

In response to your private message... at your location According and Pwr (dBm) levels you should not over power your TV sets when using the HD-4400.