I am hoping someone (Richard) can give us all some antenna education. You guys all talk about the specs and many of us poor uneducated soles have no idea what they mean. My best guess:

Gain - Higher number is better. How much the antenna can boost the signal.

BW - Higher is better. How wide a range the antenna can pick up a signal. A narrow BW makes an antenna more directional

F/B - Lower is better. Lose of signal thru the antenna?? That one is really a guess.

Can someone provide better answers? Are there other stats we should be looking at when comparing antennas?

Thanks,
Tim

While I'm not Richard, you are really carrying the selection of an antenna to a high level. As a general rule more gain is better, although it certain circumstances involving multipath it could be a problem. Bandwith is the frequency spectrum covered by the antenna. You could cut an antenna for only the freq. of channel 6, as an example. This is the reason the elements are different lengths. An omni-directional antenna will have almost no front to back and very low forward gain. So you have a trade off. This is why a directional antenna will work best if you have a poor location and some distance from the antenna towers. To achieve high forward gain and a good front to back ratio the antenna boom will be quite long with a large number of elements spaced properly.

I would suggest keeping it simple based on your particular location.

Hugh

Gain is reported on a logarithmic scale. Every 3 db mains a doubling of power. Thus a 9 db gain means the antenna captures 8 times as much power as some comparison antenna, usually a simple dipole.

Beamwidth tends to be the inverse of gain: The higher an antenna's gain, the narrower its beam.

Bandwidth is the gain as a function of frequency. Yagis have a narrower bandwidth than stacked dipoles (eg. the 8-bay).

For most people, front/back and front/side ratios are not important. (A front/back ratio of 9 db means the antenna picks up 8 times as much forward as backward.) But in a severe multi-path situation (severe ghosting) the front/N ratio is important, where "N" is the direction the ghost signal is coming from, which could be any compas direction. If the antenna has nulls in its reception pattern and a null can be aligned with "N", the ghost is eliminated. Stacked dipoles tend to have more and deeper nulls that Yagi/Corner-Reflector antennas.

Thanks for answering the questions but....

All these specs will not do you much good. The only thing I can recommend is stay away from omnidirectionals - It's OK to try them once - you might get lucky - but if not then stop wasting time and go with a directional and possibly a rotor.

Richard F. Fisher
Mastertech Repair Corporation, Lawrenceville, GA
770-513-3987 E-Mail - help@mastertechtv.com
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