Well, I've talked to the good people at Wade Antenna and got some recommendations out of them. Based on the location of our tower and known signal strengths/profiles, they were able to estimate signal strengths. Now, I'm a bit of a noobie when it actually comes to interpreting this, maybe someone can help.

For example, for Ch. 14 WUTV, they suggest a dual 8-foot parabolic antenna (PB-82BB) with a gain of 23 dB. This will yield "Ant. O/P dBmV" of 12. What's that mean?

For example, for Ch. 14 WUTV, they suggest a dual 8-foot parabolic antenna (PB-82BB) with a gain of 23 dB. This will yield "Ant. O/P dBmV" of 12. What's that mean?The dBmV is an output level usually expressed in either micro- or milli- electron volts, so they're talking about the brute force antenna electron voltage output. This is important because the higher the gain and the higher the voltage, the better for your distribution system. Having lots to work with is always better than not having enough. ;)

Photons leaving the broadcast antenna exciter travel at the speed of light to your antenna, and when they hit the element they knock an electron, creating a microvoltage jump. If this happens millions of times in a second and the photons have different frequencies and/or amplitudes as they hit, a pattern of differences begins to show up when all the voltages are displayed on a raster. With electronic circuitry, you can make those patterns into a TV picture with audio track.

The antenna's output voltage level is important if you think of it this way: if I could set up a small UHF antenna on the same tower and get the exact same gain as the 2 giant Wade dishes, the number of photons knocking electrons on the small antenna will obviously be much lower than the number doing the same on the big dishes because the parabolic reflectors are redirecting and focusing a greater number of photons from across a much wider surface, resulting in more "hits" on the elements. The Doppler Effect of the photons having arrived later than the direct hits after having made that extra trip from the reflector mesh is so low as to be unmeasurable. So, the output voltage will be much lower from the smaller antenna and you will have to use amplifiers, which introduces the awful problem of injected noise.

To summarize, the higher the gain and the higher the output voltage, the cleaner and more steady the distributed signal will be.

Okay, that seems reasonable enough. So in the context of potentially putting these signals out on a cable system, how do I interpret dBmV of 1 on CITY-DT? Is there a point where I'd see picture problems?

...how do I interpret dBmV of 1 on CITY-DT?Do the different output voltage numbers you received all represent what would come off of the same pair of Wade BB dishes pointed only at Buffalo?

Do the different output voltage numbers you received all represent what would come off of the same pair of Wade BB dishes pointed only at Buffalo?
Nope, they quote a few different antennas - they are recommending a 6' parabolic + pre-amp to point at Toronto which should cover City, Sun TV, CFTO and CBLFT.

Well, electronics text books aside, if Wade recommends a certain CATV solution, believe it. ;) Also, just wondering if you've considered trying for Rochester too, or is that overkill?

Nah, probably won't bother. We can probably only offer one set of eastern US 4+1 anyway, and I don't think there's a lot of value in chewing up that much bandwidth to offer a second set.

Hi Travis,

12 dBmv means a signal strength of 12 dB over a reference level where 1 mV = 0 dB. For voltage that means 10**(12 / 20) = 4 mV. So the antenna will give you 4 mV (=0.004 Volt) at 75 Ohm impedance for that particular channel. It may not seem much, but 4 mV is a huge signal given the sensitivity of receivers these days!

-Rob-

Wade has purchased the manufacturing rights of all antenna products owned by Lindsay Broadband.

http://www.broadcastermagazine.com/issues/ISArticle.asp?id=51935&issue=01252006

Wow, talk about cornering the market on professional grade (head end, CATV, research) antennas, apart from Blonder Tongue. Wade gets to sell Lindsay's products, and Lindsay gets the right to sell anything in the Wade catalogue too.

Thanks for the heads up!

Lindsay Press Releases regarding Wade and previous stuff:

http://www.lindsayelec.com/whats.new/p.releases.html

Wade Antenna, with its TACO and Delhi Antenna divisions, is moving to a new 50,000 square foot facility in the city of Brantford. “Our new state of the art manufacturing capabilities will benefit both Lindsay Broadband and its customers. We will continue to provide Lindsay and Wade Antenna products that will be sold jointly through both companies,” said President and CEO Patric Murphy. “This will also allow us to expand our production and move in to new markets.”

Alright,

Was anybody man enough to purchse this 4' parabolic for $400.00.

http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/uhfparabolic.pdf

If you want the real gain, this is the baby for you. At present, I am thinking about ordering one of these monster antennas, however, I have to think of a way to have it mount to a 1 1/4 mask pipe, when it is made for a 2".

Any ideas......

We've joked about the 6 foot and dual 6 foot models before, and in the CATV Head End thread there is talk about those big Wade parabolics for the pros, but I don't know of anyone who has tried the smaller consumer version. I'm really curious about how it would do, but I can see from its gain estimate that a stacked CM4228 pair would probably outdo it in that department.

You might want to ask Tigerbangs about it over on the Home Theater Spot site in the Antennas forum:

http://www.hometheaterspot.com/index.php

Happy to see that Wade has overhauled their web site, and also happy to see that the name Delhi is once again figuring prominently after it fell a bit out of use:

http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/index1.htm

I hope they'll replace the grainy black & white antenna drawings with higher quality graphics or photographs, but all-in-all the improvements are much appreciated, especially the PDF product info sheets. :) The map-based list of Canadian Delhi distributors isn't functional yet.

Tigerbangs has been after Wade for years to get their consumer marketing improved, so here's hoping this is the first step.

I notice that Linday Antenna's web site has disappeared, and there is no sign of them with Google. After the events of Post #53/54 did they close up shop?

Anybody done a real world comparison on the Wade WL 7-13 vs. the Winegard 1713? They look similar and are rated 1, 2 on the chart. How different is the gain and overall performance?

They look similar
Not really. The Wade WL 7-13S is a log periodic antenna while the Winegard 1713 is a yagi. My guess is the Wade will provide the spec'd 11.5 dBi evenly across the 7 to 13 channel range, while the yagi will peak at certain channels.

http://www.wade-antenna.com/Wade/HighBandLog.pdf

Thanks 300ohm, now if I could only buy one...

That's usually a showstopper for typical consumers. The Wade antenna line is now pretty well exclusively marketed to the professional broadcast industries and military. Availability for consumers is now uncommon, but the prices are whopping too if you can even get one!

hmmm, maybe I'll get my cousin who works for the cable company to buy me one...

The Wade antenna line is now pretty well exclusively marketed to the professional broadcast industries and military. Availability for consumers is now uncommon...

Since I'm still relatively new to OTA, I have to ask what might be FAQs about Wade, which seems to offer some very impressive products.

1). Did they use to sell direct to customers? (It appears that now you can't order anything on the web site but have to go through a distributor).

2). Why aren't the prices shown?

3). Why (and when) did they change their business model to essentially exclude "regular folks"?