If I install antennas (AM,FM and local TV) in my attic. As they are inside the house I am not grounding them. Is this OK?

Still, not a bad idea to get them grounded. There could be several scenarios where this could prove effective. I don't have time to list them all. Better safe than sorry!

I have found that when grounding the antenna, I would almost always get better reception. Of course there is other safety reasons to ground.

This thread reminded me that I need to figure out what type of antenna I need for our new house. We will begin building our new house in the next month or so, and I'm planning our home theatre.

According to www.antennaweb.org, all the digital HD channels are labeled yellow, and the SD channels are labeled blue. I'd prefer locating the antenna in the attic as opposed to outside. Can someone make a recommendation?

Thanks,
Craig

I have done a few of these, keep in mind that the antenna chart is for outdoor line of sight usage. If mounted inside an attic with a asphalt shingle roof you will lose about 45% of the signal strength. Go with the biggest antenna you can get into the space without touching anything else. (touching = bad) I use a PVC pipe to hang it from a rafter and ground it to remove any static build up that may occur. I have had some expensive modulator equipment fry due to static.

atiics mounts are a crap shoot!
Good luck!

ChannelMaster 8 bay antenna, Channel Mater 7777 or 7778 amp. The 8 bay is strictly a UHF antenna, The analog signal will come in, but not great. On the other hand the digital will be sweet. The antenna is about 4'x4' it won't fit into the standard access hole. Nice thing is it comes apart. We do at least one of these a week. It is the only antenna that we use. We only put them in the attic. I guarantee it will work.

Channel Master 2 X 4221 4 bay for areas with good reception and 2 X 4228 8 bay coupled with an 0068DSB amplifier for the fringe areas.

This set up has worked the best out of everything I have tried.

I have to agree with the above. Use a Channel Master 7777 Amp with CM 4221 or 4228 UHF antenna. For VHF check out antennacraft. We've used every antenna under the sun and the antennacraft work best in our locations. As for the mounting in the attic. You shouldn't have a problem. We never mount antennas outside and the closest broadcast tower is about 45 miles away.

Robbie S

How low will that 4 bay tune in? I am thinking of trying one here at the house. I admit to never using one (oh for shame :-o ). I need one for the hi-def tuner. The VHF mixed with the dedicated UHF blonder tongues looks kinda messy, then with the propriatary amps you get a nest of messy wires. Arrrg.

The problem that we had with the 4 bay is that it's "field of view" is not large enough for a suburban area say 45-60 miles away from the towers. Where we are located the majority of the stations are right next to each other but there are 2 that are slightly south. We can't receive good signal on all of them and when you split the difference the signal is not good enough on any of them. So we switched to the 8 bay. Problem solved. We use it alot in the 60-70 mile range, and always in the attic.

Actually depending on your range and azimuth position to all of you antennas you can use the 4221 or 4228 to receive VHF signals. The lowest VHF channel we have is channel 7. When we do an install on the west side we use just the single 4221 antenna. We have to seperate when we go out to the east.

Obiwan... Why do you think the setup would be mess? You run a single RG-6 from each antenna to the pre-amp. A single RG-6 from the pre-amp to the amp. Then you distribute accordingly... Where's the mess in that?

Blonder tongue uses propriatary pre amps and amps for each antenna on the mast. Now factor that in with the simple fact that I was using headend gear leftover from a CATV headend and you see that each channel freeq has its OWN antenna LOL. It looked like I was calling mars man. And the crappy part was I was using an old 1st gen Panasonic HDTV tuner that worked like crap.

It was all just an experiment to see what it would do, right now I have 2 VHF antennas joined with a "Join-Tenna", I have one tower due south of all the others here. It is the lowest freeq in the list.

But the guys over at Channel master recomended the 8 bay as well, sounds verry tidy.

|If mounted inside an attic with a asphalt

For perspective, while you are freaking out about what a great amount of loss that is, don't forget that -3 dB is a signal power loss of 50% !

Also, one of the reasons attic antennas are a crap shoot is that you do not know what material is in the roof. I once had ZERO success with an antenna looking through a tall gable. Turned out there was stucco on the outside, with a wall full of chickenwire. Putting the antenna in a cramped inconvenient place worked well.

Kind of funny seeing all this GLOWING posts on the CM4228.

I have an older CM UHF only antenna that looks something like a 7' satellite dish (can't remember the number-but it' no longer in production).

Anyway, with the idea of having something a little less intrusive up on the tower, I installed a CM4228. Lo and behold, my Toshiba HD box would no longer pick up those distant HD stations.

The towers are in the vicinity of 70 miles out, FWIW.

Always wondered about those real high dollar Terk HD antennas, but not up for paying $200+ to check one of them out.