# Signal Booster



## Bobwhite (Nov 29, 2006)

I was thinking of buying a signal booster, but the antenna is on my roof, and the cable run down through my attic(which has no power outlets in it) so the only place I could plug in the booster would be right next to the tv at the end of the wire run. Is this worth bothering with, or a waste of my time and money. I believe I read here that you want to hook up the booster on the antenna side of things, or as close to the antenna as you can get. Thanks to all for any input


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## STEVEN-H (Jan 19, 2007)

Bobwhite said:


> I was thinking of buying a signal booster, but the antenna is on my roof, and the cable run down through my attic(which has no power outlets in it) so the only place I could plug in the booster would be right next to the tv at the end of the wire run. Is this worth bothering with, or a waste of my time and money. I believe I read here that you want to hook up the booster on the antenna side of things, or as close to the antenna as you can get. Thanks to all for any input


I think you will find the booster does go right at the antenna and the power supply at the TV. The power goes up to the amp. in the antenna wire so your setup should be just fine.


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## EXTACAMO (Apr 7, 2007)

Bobwhite said:


> I was thinking of buying a signal booster, but the antenna is on my roof, and the cable run down through my attic(which has no power outlets in it) so the only place I could plug in the booster would be right next to the tv at the end of the wire run. Is this worth bothering with, or a waste of my time and money. I believe I read here that you want to hook up the booster on the antenna side of things, or as close to the antenna as you can get. Thanks to all for any input


 Just make sure you select the correct pre-amp for your antenna. Either VHF/UHF or just UHF. I use the winegard HDP-269 UHF with my Channel Master 4228 UHF Bowtie. The combo works well. Check out solidsignal.com for good info on pre-amps and OTA in general. Good Luck!


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## gcisko (Sep 27, 2006)

STEVEN-H said:


> I think you will find the booster does go right at the antenna and the power supply at the TV. The power goes up to the amp. in the antenna wire so your setup should be just fine.


Depends on the booster. The one I have from ACE hardware goes by the TV.


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## Bobwhite (Nov 29, 2006)

Thanks to all for their help. This gives me good advice when I check out which booster to buy.


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## oljim (Aug 6, 2002)

Anything that says booster will be junk, you need a low noise pre amp..


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## Jim5506 (Jun 7, 2004)

ALWAYS read the specs on a pre-amp. Noise level should be at or below 2dB, anything above that will amplify both signal and noise and you gain little.


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

How about 0.5 dB NF, 20 dB gain, +35 dBm IP3, and only about $450 with power supply?

http://www.emceecom.com/Documents/EMCEE PA-20U Pre-Amplifier.pdf

Sure cleaned up some of our problems here. Gonna try it on a mountaintop next.


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## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

Would be a lovely thing to have (20 dB is what I'm using, but it's a Winegard AP4700) - but that price is a bit steep for Joe average - at least too much $$$$ for my pocketbook...


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## kenglish (Oct 2, 2004)

It may be the norm in big cities, at least until the switchover (with two channels per station) is done. It sure helped with the low power analogs vs. full power analog+digitals on our building. I needed 9 dB of pads in front of my Triax 24 dB professional preamp, to prevent x-mod. This handled it with no problem, and brought the channel 66 lptv up to about a TASO-2 or better.

We want to test it on a big relay/translator site next. 

I kinda wonder what it would do for DXers?!


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