What are the Best Long Range TV Antennas For Sale
What is the Best Outdoor TV Antenna?:
Finding the model with the highest reception performance for your area isn't always cut and dry. We specialize in long range, deep fringe HDTV antennas, but also offer lower gain antenna with wider patterns. However, it should be noted that placement and how the aerial is mounted can be more crucial to the final result (i.e. mounting inside an apartment building or brick/stone/concrete/aluminum siding home generally doesn't work so well, since these wall materials will effectively shield out the signals).
In many cases, we help customers pick up difficult stations that other antennas have failed at.. However it should be noted that not all areas benefit from a high gain antenna (the higher the gain, the more directional the antenna also becomes). Granted a higher gain antenna may still pick up the stronger stations at its sides, it will actually have less range in the directions it's not aimed toward, in comparison to a lower gain 360 degree antenna (due to the focused signal pattern effect). As such in some cases a medium range model with a wider signal antenna may come out ahead in being the best in the amount of channels obtained without turning, in some areas. However if you do have weak stations a 360 degree or omni antenna just won't have the necessary range either.
If you're in a situation where the stations are both quite weak and widely space apart in direction, either using an antenna rotator (also referred to as a rotor) or using two antennas aimed in different directions may be necessary (which is often cheaper than an antenna rotator). This assumes the stations are weak in both directions.. If the stations in one direction are closer and of decent signal strengths, in many cases a directional antenna may pick up these stronger stations without being aimed towards them.. So you may want to try aiming a long range directional antenna towards the weakest cluster and see how many stations come in through the sides of rear of the antenna.
If you're new to over the air reception, you may be surprised to know that higher gain antennas actually have the lowest range at their sides and behind them. If your area has moderately weak stations spaced widely apart, a simpler 360 degree or omni directional may be favorable. We also carry these style of antennas as some areas benefit from them. For example in the NE parts of the USA, where the stations are heavily spaced out in several directions, a customer often doesn't want to be burdened with constantly turning their antenna. For the northeast, the 360 degree style antenna may make more sense. However for much of the midwest it's desirable to aim the station in one main direction.
It should be noted that the directional antennas will pick up stations in all directions, just not as well as the direction it's pointed in. For example, our insane gain models still have an up to 35 mile range at its sides and behind the antenna. So the trick is to aim the antenna towards the weakiest cluster of station, as the closer / stronger stations may come in just fine without the antenna being aimed toward them.
However in areas such that weak stations are in multiple directions, it may be possible to use two highly directional antennas and combine them or use an A/B coax switch instead of a rotator. We offer an inexpensive dual antenna accessory kit for this purpose.
For retrieving weak stations and maximum range however, a decent sized antenna with several elements such as our Insane gain UHF and VHF/UHF models may be just the ticket. Not only are our antennas extremely efficient, we maximized their potential for their respective sizes. Meaning, not only do we have 18 x UHF elements (plus 12 x VHF elements for the VHF/UHF insane version), we've carefully tuned them to have the maximum gain possible for their respective sizes (44" lon for the UHF only antenna and 60" long for the VHF/UHF version).
Our VHF/UHF version is only 60" long, but has an outstanding up to 100 mile UHF range and up to 80 mile on VHF over flat terrain (without significant obstructions / terrain in the way). In addtion to their lenghts, we've added oversized corner reflectors to make a very robust antenna. Our UHF only version has a robust corner reflector set, whereas the VHF/UHF version has "two" corner reflector sets.
It should be noted that antenna range and reception performance isn't limited to merely antenna gain however. There are other considerations which we've carefully took intoo consideration to yield an exceptional product such as:
How well matched the antenna is (it's operation frequency bandwidth): Our antennas maintain under a 3:1 vSWR (actually under 2:1 for the majority of the US UHF and VHF-hi band), making it efficient across the entire TV bands.
To find which Range Xperts antenna is best for you, please see our ANTENNA COMPARISON PAGE.
