Combining Two Aerials

christo82 · 24-10-2010 2:39pm #1

I want to combine two aerials, one looking North from Skerries towards Clermont Carn and Divis, the other looking East towards either the Granada area or Wales. What would I need to combine the two?

Thanks

FREETV · 24-10-2010 7:33pm

christo82 wrote: »

I want to combine two aerials, one looking North from Skerries towards Clermont Carn and Divis, the other looking East towards either the Granada area or Wales. What would I need to combine the two?

Thanks

Any good make of a diplexer/ combiner such as a Triax, Proception etc with DC pass.

I would prefer to use seperate cables and masthead amps though so as to reduce signal losses as you will be pointing your aerials towards far away transmitters and there is a loss of up to three decibels of signal with the use of some combiners. Watty and others may advise you to stack a dual array of two aerials combined together or better still four aerials together in order to maximise the signal strenght. I believe that there was a thread months back about how to go about doing this. FTE Maximal M1000 is the best masthead amp that I have ever tested. The problem is that the transmitters are in different groups and I have only seen combiners that do one group or wideband.

lucernarian · 24-10-2010 7:35pm

OP, That's a bit too vague, it's very problematic to combine two aerials unless they're in different groups. And there's no combiner that lets one have A or C on one aerial leg and B on the other. It could be done with adding filters separately but that adds cost.

If you want to DX, probably one large wideband aerial on a pole that can be easily turned or else on a rotator may be best bet.

Skerries is much too low down to have a hope of picking up anything from Britain except *perhaps* from Wales. And Divis will be poor due to distance as well as the Cooleys and Mournes both in the way. Kilkeel is quite likely your first and last port of call for UK TV, I don't know about the chances of Welsh TV.

christo82 · 24-10-2010 9:31pm

Would this diplexer not do the job?
http://www.tvtrade.ie/triax-uhf-diplexer-tfc-3537.html

Regarding receiving UK Freeview, I was able to receive it from the Winter Hill transmitter about a month ago because of the weather through my basic aerial pointing north so I thought I'd try to get it properly with a wideband aerial pointing east. I know it may not work but I'd like to try.

FREETV · 24-10-2010 11:00pm

christo82 wrote: »

Would this diplexer not do the job?
http://www.tvtrade.ie/triax-uhf-diplexer-tfc-3537.html

Regarding receiving UK Freeview, I was able to receive it from the Winter Hill transmitter about a month ago because of the weather through my basic aerial pointing north so I thought I'd try to get it properly with a wideband aerial pointing east. I know it may not work but I'd like to try.

It should as it covers nearly all of the uhf frequency bands. I would try the Welsh aerial with a masthead amp on its own firstly before bothering to connect both aerials.

lucernarian · 24-10-2010 11:42pm

No combiner will allow you to pick up both Clermont and Divis off the same aerial leg. Or even Winter Hill and Clermont Carn on separate combiner inputs without likely ghosting problems for the irish stations. That was the point of my post. If you wanted to see if you could pick up Winter Hill, getting a single large aerial would stand a better chance. And Arfon from Wales or Blaenplywf are both in different groups to Winter hill.

Due to the alternatives for watching RTÉ where you are, you'll only easily be able to diplex analogue RTE1, 2 and TV3 from Dublin, with Winter Hill if you do go for that option.

cauliflower69 · 24-10-2010 11:43pm

Thats basically as far as I know an A / E combiner.

Combining Two Aerials

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