It hasn't been so easy for years to find well designed, reasonably priced
I live in the Great Lakes Bay area of Michigan, which is the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City DMA for local OTA television. All my local stations are in an arc from 31 to 56 miles away, with one being high VHF, the rest are UHF.
I have a 2" wellpipe mast 30' high, and on that I had installed an Xtremesignal HDB91x antenna for UHF, and a AC Y10-7-13 antenna for high VHF. Both antennas were pointed South-East towards the center of my receivable station arc. I originally installed a unfiltered Kitztech KT-200 preamp, and both antennas fed into that with a standard UVSJ. All my stations came in, but due to the many trees in my neighborhood, I had a fair amount of issues with frequent multipath. I then discovered Televes products, and wanted to see how they would work out in my situation as they seemed very well designed and well priced for my needs. I first tried out the single input Televes 560383 preamp, that comes with AGC for better uptime, and also includes built-in FM & LTE/5g filtering. I installed this as a straight swap in place of the Kitztech preamp.
With my results, I feel that the Televes model 560383 preamp clearly beats the Kitztech KT-200 preamp by some margin. It's also a higher quality build, and I can't see how anybody could go wrong in trying one out for themselves if all you need is a GREAT preamp, at a GREAT price!
I was impressed with that preamp, but I also REALLY enjoy playing with various antennas since I was a kid. So, I also decided next to try one of their fully integrated antennas that have built-in preamps and see how that would do compared to what I was using.
So, I next purchased a DATBOSS Mix LR UHF - VHF Long Range Outdoor TV Antenna (149884), which receives both High VHF and UHF, and has a latest repack-ready preamp built in. That preamp also has AGC and automatically adjusts its gain independently for VHF-High and UHF signals, rejects any interfering FM and LTE/5g signals, and performs best since it's installed right at the antenna dipole. This one antenna replaced both my separate HDB91x UHF and Y10-7-13 Vhf antennas, and was installed at the top of the wellpipe mast and peaked for my station arc and best quality signal. I'm VERY impressed with this antenna, and it definitely out-performs the previous antenna combo with much better uptime, and far less multipath issues.
I also have two more stations that I really wanted that are in a different local DMA, but too far off-beam from my normal station arc for the DATBOSS to keep them locked 24/7. So, I then purchased a Televes Ellipse Mix Amplified TV Antenna - LTE Ready (148883). This antenna is also designed for the very latest repack, and comes in a much more compact design than the DATBOSS Mix LR. That could make it a GREAT choice for people that want something powerful, yet in a smaller sized package. I had by then installed a 30' antenna tower next to the wellpipe mast with the eventual intention of removing the wellpipe mast, and going with all antennas on the tower only. However, since I decided to try out different antennas, I'm keeping both of them for now. Anyway, I installed the Ellipse Mix antenna at the top of the mast on the tower. That's at about 42', and that antenna is aimed North-West and centered to receive these last two stations. It feeds into a networked Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Extend tuner, and receives both stations solidly 24/7 at 30 miles for the UHF one and 56 miles for the High VHF one. I'm quite impressed at just how well it works for such a small package.
To sum it all up, it hasn't been so easy for years to find well designed, reasonably priced, repack-ready and up to date OTA antenna equipment in the U.S., or find support to ask questions, and Televes fits the bill, stands by their stuff, and offers the best support I've seen!
