Antenna amplifier Q's

[bob-n]

Just "upgraded" from old storm damaged 15' long CM rooftop antenna to CM4228 with rotor. Noticed in the process of removing the old unit that it had a built-in pre-amp(?) on board the antenna. The guts were rattling around in the box, so I figured it was toast. I was wrong. Put up my new unit, went inside, and got a total of 1 channel (WTMJ-D) between Milwaukee and Chicago.

Needless to say, I wasn't very pleased at that point. So I put in Matrix Revolutions and had a cold one. :bang:

Somewhere in that thinking process, I wondered how many splices and extra cable there was in this house (since the previous owner was a self proclaimed radio-head) Over an hour's time I removed over 60' of extra cable, 5 splitters, and 4 unions. And discovered an OLD CM 0100 powered antenna amp in the ceiling of the basement.

With removing all the unnecessary junk, my signal is back to close to where I started before replacing the antenna (most signals about 30-40%, some 10-14%. No 6 of course). But I want more signal.

Would a non-powered pre-amp such as what was on the old antenna make THAT MUCH difference? Or would I be wasting time and $$$ going that route? I really don't want to run more power up the antenna.. but will if absolutely necessary.

Other possibly pertinent info:
Rooftop mounted CM4228, on digital CM rotor, about 30' above ground
Chicago and Milwaukee signal directions obstructed by trees
Location Silver Lake WI (western Kenosha Cty)
No cable/sat/etc. OTA only.
SIR T151

[mhz40]

Unless you had it mated with some sort of power supply on the ground, I think what you are looking at is the 300 balanced to 75 ohm coax transformer... standard stuff on antennas.
An unpowered pre-amp is bad news... you may have not gotten enough gas through it to do much of anything.
If you gutted the wiring and removed all the splitters (17db of loss in just splitters) and only have a single 2-way or 4-way now in place, you should have enough gas to feed your gear without a pre-amp.  But alass, Silver Lake!  Maybe a 10db antenna-mounted amp may do you some good.  No guarantee without measuring the levels with a signal level meter.