On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:24:21 -0500
"Jim Wilkins" wrote:

snip
I put the antenna preamp inside the house at the cable entry, so I can
disconnect it for thunderstorms or if the power fails.

Most likely just preaching to the choir...

75 ohm coax, like RG59 has quite a bit of loss per foot. RG6 has
less but still doesn't perform as well as good 300 ohm twin line.
However 300 ohm twin line is a pain to run with all the stand-offs and
foibles coming in contact with other conductive surfaces.

The beauty to putting the amp right on the antenna is that you haven't
encountered any significant signal loss yet. Once you have loss signal,
say getting from the antenna down to your amp inside, you can't
recreate it. You will just amplify the noise already introduced.

You can then use RG59 or similar coax to make your run without the loss
causing more trouble because you have already boosted it. RG59 coax is
a lot simpler to run not having to worry about stand-offs and such. The
power supply will be inside the house somewhere, most likely by the TV
and you can still unplug it during lightning storms. Been doing that for
~30 years now and haven't lost the amp on the antenna yet. We get our
share of lightning too...

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
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