Chicago OTA Antenna question

[mukeman]

I currently recieve all my locals OTA from MKE stations and was wondering if anyone has had consistant signal succes from at least a few Chicago OTA stations (WGN, WFLD, WPWR)?  I am in South Milwaukee and about 1 mile from the lake.  I've visited the TV Fool site and others, and before I invest in a UHF roof top antenna, thought I would ask if others here have tried and had success?

[antennaguy]

I currently recieve all my locals OTA from MKE stations and was wondering if anyone has had consistant signal succes from at least a few Chicago OTA stations (WGN, WFLD, WPWR)?

I looked up South Milwaukee on amtennapoint.com. There are 14 Chicago OTA stations and all but CBS are UHF and CBS is a high VHF station. All are on the same compass heading of about 170° and all about 72 miles way.

Try a 91XG antenna from antennas direct. (http://www.antennasdirect.com/91XG_HDTV_Antenna.html). It's a very powerful, high performance UHF directional antenna. You must get as much elevation on the antenna as possible. Even with its great gain (16.7 dB), it cannot pick up signals blocked by the curvature of the earth, so place it, along with your present antenna, at the top of a long pole, keeping a minimum of 4 feet between the antennas. You can use a splitter to join the two antennas to the existing in-coming cable.

Try it first without an amplifier, but you will experience some signal loss between the antenna and the TV set. A cable run length of 100 feet of RG6, will lose 50% of your signal. And using a 2-way splitter, you'll lose 30% of the signal.

So you may need a pre-amp (http://www.antennasdirect.com/antenna_amplifier.html).

Antennas Direct provides customers with a 90-day, no-fault return guarantee on all Antennas Direct antennas and a lifetime warranty against failure, corrosion, defects in materials or workmanship. If the 91XG doesn't get you Chicago, return it for a full refund, no questions asked.

[Sparkman87]

You can forget about getting WBBM up there, I'm in Waukegan/Wadsworth area, have a strong rooftop antenna on top of a 2nd story, highest house in the neighborhood, and I only get it occasionally.  They will be changing from ch 3 to ch 11 at the February transition, so the should have more coverage then.  I finally decided to aim my antenna north to Milwaukee & get all Milwaukee stations, plus all Chicago but WBBM that way.

[mukeman]

Thanks for the input and responses to this topic thus far.  I guess I'd like to hear from someone who lives on the south side of Milwaukee (or vicinity) that has actually tried to pick up their locals OTA from Chicago.  Someone who has a roof top antenna on a rotor that can point it south and try it out. What is your location, type of UHF antenna your using, height above ground and stations you recieve.  Thanks!

[Talos4]

Ok, Given your parameters I'll jump in...

I live on the SW side of Milw, I have a rotor and a 32 element 80" boom VHF/UHF antenna ont he roof.

Swinging my antenna to the South/SE will generally produce poor results. Unless propagation is running pretty good that's the best i can do.

Now I will say that with my particular antenna Chicago is pretty much on the fringe of it's optimum range. If Iwas really interested in pulling in Chicago I would look at getting a larger antenna with a working range of 75-100 miles (or more) and possibly adding an amplifier to the system.

The only problem I've found trying to use amplifiers is that they amplify everything. Interference, etc. Plus if you are fairly close to the local channels you can (and I have) overdriven those signals and that results in more problems than it's worth.

Many years ago I used to like DXing TV which is where I found some of the problems noted above.  Now, I just stick to the locals with the roof top because I can't stand seeing rabbit ears in the house plus, I run 6 TV's and D* receivers with the one antenna.  

Here's what's on the roof.
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