Rooftop antenna and the works
 

Okay, it's been a good 11 or 12 years since I've had a rooftop antenna. Before the introduction of hi-def, this was a hot spot for television reception. I'm in the middle of the country approx. 85-90 miles from Memphis and about the same from Cape Girardeau, MO.

Before the advent of hi-def, we easily got 14 channels on a regular basis and if the weather was right, I could pull in St. Louis stations and Evansville, IN. I know frequencies have changed since then and if I understand right, it's all in the UHF band now.

Coax is still ran throughout the house to various rooms and into the attic where I could readily run a booster if needed.

It's been a long time since I've looked at antennas, rotors, booster, etc. and that was back in the analog days. What would I be looking at to go back to a rooftop antenna now that everything's digital? Thanks!

Perhaps enter your location into "TV Fool" for a quick evaluation of your reception possibilities. 85-90 miles is likely on the "ragged edge" for DTV.

http://www.tvfool.com

jr

Many thanks! I checked it and apparently I'm good to go on the Memphis channels. I figured in driving distance and they're apparently figuring line of sight. Cape Girardeau will still be an issue but I can get that via my local package on Directv.

Second question. Who makes good rooftop antennas and rotors? When my dad put in the system that was in this house, he went to different dealers and wound up with a Winegard antenna, Channel Master rotor and amplifier and ISC (probably RG-59) coaxial cable in the walls which is still present. I probably don't have a need to go to the lengths that he did of driving to 2 or 3 different states assembling what I need, but I do want something good.

Antennas still pick up RF signals whether analog or digital, the principal is the same.

One of these will fix you up.

http://www.antennacraft.net/Antennas...llChannel.html

What you need to know before selecting one, are there stations you want to receive on the low and high VHF bands. Very few transmit on low VHF but some areas do have high VHF like DFW with Ch 8 on RF8 and Ch 52 on RF9.

It looks like I have WMC on 5 and KAIT still on 8. Other than that, it looks like everything has went to UHF.

You mentioned that the house is wired with RG-59, which was a little more widely used back in the day. However, trying to get a decient signal now is more difficult so you may want to consider running some RG-6 instead.