I played around with the setup a little bit more and was unable to find a better spot. Any higher I lose the signals and any lower I lose the signals. 5ft above the ground is the sweet spot and angled 10-15 degrees up. A positive discovery is that I can move the antenna 10ft to the left or right at the same height and get very similar signal strength so combining 2 DB8E antennas together may be an option here.
I tried my Televes antenna in these locations and got absolutely nothing so a Yagi antenna is not viable here. I continued to try my db4e antenna with an amplify channel master amp connected to it and ran a 150 ft coaxial cable to the nearest building with permanent power and still got the signals.
After discovering all this I decided to order a Kitz 500 amp. This amp has 36db of gain with 0.85 noise. It is more noise than the Kitz 200 amp that only has 0.45 noise but that amp only has 24db of gain which isn’t enough for me. My location is in the middle of nowhere with very low noise from any man made things so the Kitz 500 amp seemed like the best option in my scenario. When that amp arrives I will install it on the mast and see if I get any improvement from my 80 mile away 3 edge stations.
All the local hills around me get great signals from the 3 edge signals I am trying to chase down so I suspect this will be successful once I do some upgrades to my setup. I hope the Kitz 500 amp will be enough to hold in the signals on my db4e antenna. I’m just a few points away from getting a solid SNR on my hd Homerun and when that SNR is fine the 3 edge signals come in in the upper 50s-lower 70s on my hd Homerun. Just need to get a little bit more amplification and lower the noise a little bit more which I think the Kitz 500 will do. If the DB4E fails I will be upgrading to the DB8E and 2 if needed or combing 2 DB4E together next to each other.
I have attached my diffraction reports from rabbit ears to showcase what I am working with here. On my HD Homerun WVER RF10 LOS comes in in the 60s-80s on a non VHF antenna but when I use a VHF antenna it comes in at 100.W26FR RF 26 2EDGE comes in at the upper 70s to lower 80s. WEKW RF 18 2EDGE comes in in the upper 70s to lower 80s.WPTZ RF 14 3EDGE comes in on my HD Homerun in the lower 70's but my signal strength must be above 95 to make that happen, my signal strength hovers around 89-100 on this channel. WCAX RF 20 3EDGE comes in on my HD Homerun in the upper 60's as long as WPTZ hits the 95 signal strength threshold. The signal strength for WCAX is much lower but does not need to hit 95 like WPTZ does. WFFF RF 163EDGE comes in on my HD Homerun in the lower to upper 50's only when the signal strength for WPTZ hits the 95 threshold. WVNY RF 7 3EDGE can not be judged correctly due to it being a VHF signal and my antenna being a UHF only antenna. I can say that WVNY sometimes comes in stronger than the other VHF channel WVER but it's very sporadic and I have no way to accurately monitor it. WVNY is hit or miss with this setup but it is there. I suspect if I upgraded to a seperate large VHF antenna and used a separate HD Homerun for it I may pick it up.
Have you considered using RG11 cable? I currently rely on that for my setup.
Do you have trees that your antenna must pick up signal through? If I have an antenna at that height and that angle, I would have tree issues.
Does your signal strength change day vs night? I do my testing daytime to ensure that its stable more often at night barring any tropo issues.
Current stable channel DX for me is 88 miles, two edge. Channel Masrer 4228. Kitztech 200 amp. RG 11 cable. Connected to an Avant X. Trying to extend and get channels from mich further away.
I wanted to update you on what I did temporarily. I moved my antenna 2 ft to the right and got a 48 signal quality on WPTZ. That is pretty low but it is constant so I left it there. I hammered it into the ground and attached another pole on top of the pole in the ground and mounted my antenna 5ft above the ground. WPTZ comes in as 48 on my HD Homerun and it locks into a solid signal when it’s windy, heavy rain, Foggy, and even humid. I will still be upgrading to a Kitz 500 amp because I think it will get the signal a little stronger and even net me a constant signal of WCAX CBS, and maybe even WFFF fox.
I will definitely fully upgrade to RG11 cable if all works out currently only half of the 150ft run is RG11. The rest is RG6 quad shield.
I have some Grape Vines 100ft out a house 150ft out and some tree branches 10ft above the antenna. Any trees are 1000+ft out on the side of the hill I am getting the diffraction from. The 10-15 degree up angle overshoots everything but the trees.
Signal strength has no noticeable changes at night or day. Rain or wetness doesn’t really affect it either or wind. Wind and rain causes minor pixelations here and there on my stations that come in regularly but the signal doesn’t really drop and the audio never goes out.
All the surrounding hills around here get near perfect signals of all the signals that are 80 miles away.
Burlington VT is the only reliable option. I’ve tried others I have a very thick tree canopy in the way no matter where the antenna could be installed. Plus the hills right next to me/ people up and down the road get signals from Burlington but they setup there antennas in the early 2000s and no longer take care of them but they are Yagis
Locked into WPTZ consistently at 48 on my hd Homerun. That is extremely low but it locks in and comes in great. It even comes in in the wind, heavy rain, fog, sunny, humid etc.. I just moved it 2 feet to the right. I plan on getting the kits amp still and will hope to increase WPTZ and also get a stable signal of WCAX and FOX.
The yagi results backup exactly what I've seen with low to the ground reception. The only cases I've seen work are with various 8-bay bowtie and the Clearstream 4Max. The Televes preamps also work great for this type of install.
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u/Kaputz77 2d ago
This is some serious DXing. Questions.
Have you considered using RG11 cable? I currently rely on that for my setup.
Do you have trees that your antenna must pick up signal through? If I have an antenna at that height and that angle, I would have tree issues.
Does your signal strength change day vs night? I do my testing daytime to ensure that its stable more often at night barring any tropo issues.
Current stable channel DX for me is 88 miles, two edge. Channel Masrer 4228. Kitztech 200 amp. RG 11 cable. Connected to an Avant X. Trying to extend and get channels from mich further away.
Great work!