Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAmplification was the key in our area
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2016
This is my 2nd purchase. I purchased the first antenna in the fall of 2014 for $40 mainly to see the state of “Over the Air” broadcasting. At the time of the purchase we had an analog cable TV subscription that cost more each year and had fewer channels.
I placed the antenna over a chair in a room of the house that just happened to be located the furthest away from the major broadcast towers. I was pleasantly surprised to be able to pick up about 30 channels. Depending on how I jiggled the antenna I could add a few channels and lose a few. After 2 months of testing, I decided to move the antenna into another room of the house.
Our house has a coaxial connection in every room of the house. All the coax connections home-run from a closet in the room that is closest to all the broadcast towers. This is the room of the house that I moved the antenna to and placed it in a window that just happened to be dual-pane and low-E. I was pleasantly surprised to pick up about 40 channels. For grins I tried it without the preamp and was down to 1 channel. I later confirmed this with other brands that were not amplified, and at best was able to get 1-3 channels but not without issues. The amplifier was definitely required in our location. I tried the antenna flat against the wall and even flat against the window, but it seemed to pick up more channels when I wedged it in-between the two shades on the window (see photo). I've seen "curved" antenna's and now I had a "curve" antenna and signal reception was even better than flush on the window or wall. Because it was wedged in between the two shades, it was easy to take down for cleaning.
I connected it to the main distribution network in the house which has a 1:8 HDTV drop amp with 4.5dB of amplification. In each room of the house that has a cable jack I ended up running the signal through a 2nd 1:4 HDTV drop amp with 7.5dB of amplification and was able to get from 40-50 channels depending on the TV or DTV converter box that we were using, so even though the antenna was in a fixed location there was enough of a difference between coaxial runs and different hardware to account for up to 10 channels.
For grins, I opened the window and moved the antenna outdoors and was able to get 55 local channels and all the other tuners in the house varied by 3-5 channels, but obviously this was not an outdoor antenna - just wanted to know how much the “house” was actually causing us to lose in signal strength and channel availability.
I ran this setup for another 3 months after I had cut the proverbial cable and would eventually decided to purchase a bigger outdoor antenna which in reality was not that much bigger but I also purchased the outdoor version of the same Winegard amplifier used on the FL5500A product. The outdoor antenna with mast mounted preamp got us 96 total channels while mounted on the side of the house at a height between 9 and 10 feet. Of those channels we paired those down to 42 that we like and can receive the same channels on all the hardware in the house. The bigger antenna lets us pull signals as far away as 120 miles even though it’s only rated for 60+ miles.
So this antenna with its amplifier worked very well for us. We gave one to our daughter and picked up a 2nd unit. It’s our backup antenna in case something should happen to the outdoor antenna.
The number of channels that you can pick up will vary by geographic location, home orientation, building materials used within a home, and location within a room. If you live very close to broadcast towers, the amplifier may actually hurt as it would overdrive signals - you’ll have to play with it to find what works best for your installation. For us, the amplifier was absolutely essential for both this indoor and our current outdoor antenna. Both use the Winegard amplifier.
