|
I live in a horrible location for off air reception of Chicago stations - on the mirror-image angle for anything on Hancock to ghost off of the Sears tower.
I went to the local RadioShack, and they almost refused to sell me an antenna. However, what I use it for is off-air digital, and that works this way: RadioShack combined V/U, not the biggest, but what would fit in my attic; a separate RadioShack UHF (so I could aim it and move it around a bit - the V/U unit can only be aimed in increments that fit between the trusses); the two antennas feeding a passive U/V combiner. This comes down to the family room on coax, where I have an amplified splitter (RadioCrap) set to min gain to just make up the splitter loss. (By the way, if you need an amp where you are, I do NOT recommend RadioS**t - they have the usual too much gain (so the number looks good to the uninitiated) and prone to oscillate.
With this setup the analog stations from Sears are OK, the analogs from Hancock are varying degrees of rotten (WGN channel 9 won't sync most of the time), but the digitals including the one or two on Hancock are OK, even the CBS on RF channel 3.
I show the digital HiDef to neighbors, and sometimes I'm not sure they believe it (you really don't have cable????? It's in your attic???).
So - the RS antenna may not be the best, but it may be sufficient.
|