Customer Reviews

WINEGARD HD-8800 UHF High-Gain 8-Bay Bow-Tie HDTV Antenna

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought two of them and have them mounted on a single mast facing 180 degrees from each other. I am getting good signals on all the digital channels I can receive in my area. I could do better if they were not on a single coaxial line, but they still work great. I am between Milwaukee and Chicago, so that explains my need for 2 antennas. I do not need a rotor with this setup and my only amplifier is a distribution amp in the house to split among my several TVs.

This antenna works better than I had hoped. Though it is not designed for VHF, it gets in all the VHF channels, too. Channel 2 and 7 (Moving to UHF) in Chicago and channel 10 in Milwaukee come in great. I have received channels in full sun, which is harder than you may understand, overcast and even during storms. The storms are the most problematic, so I cannot say it is always perfect, but I expected it to much worse. If you live closer than my 40-60 miles to the transmitters, you should have even better results. Using a single antenna on a RG-6 Quad shielded coaxial cable would be better still.

Assembly does take a little time, but if you can do your own RTA furniture, you can assemble these. The free shipping just makes these a even greater deal. Locally, a store wanted 80 bucks for 1 of these. At the time I got 2 at $42 with the free shipping. It was on of the best deals I ever made. I am so happy I got the antennas for my reception is great and I dropped my cable, saving $75 a month.

Much better that the imported junk. No problem with assembly at all.
I had it installed and working in less than an hour. Great reception of over 60 miles.
Winegard has been making great TV antenna for years in the USA and still do.
For the price you can't beat it. Winegard keep up the good work.

The antenna assembled without any problems. I usually do things without the instructions to see how intuitive a design is, this proved to be an intuitive assembly. All that was required was pivoting the elements out to their final position and just looking at how the wiring lined up... aside from climbing the tower. If you are uncomfortable climbing or working on your roof, hire a professional. The instructions were included.

The antenna was installed near the top of a 50' radio tower, but still does not quite peek over the trees that lie between the transmitters that are some 25 or 30 miles away and my house. In my area all the transmitters are more or less along the same bearing, so a rotator was not required here. I have an excellent signal and can see all the local channels I care to.

Not quite ready to give up cable, but the over the air signal is better than the cable... a good start.

I bought this antenna because of reviews from other people online that it was excellent at deep fringe low-UHF channel gains.

My testing shows it has about the same performance as a home-built DIY "coat-hanger-like" antenna 4-bay whisker type.

My situation is the towers I want is very far away, like 107 miles and Tvfool shows negative NM dBs and 2EDGE. I know this is past the earth's curvature and it's asking alot to get stations so far... I mounted it about 15 feet off the ground on a pole.

It can pick up those stations that far on the "right" weather conditions, which is far and few in-between.

Current there's another set of towers about 62 miles away which it can get easily, as I would have expected along with my DIY antenna. Also, it's very directional, so your target towers should be bunched near each other, otherwise, if spread out, it may be hard to get them all. Also, it can get towers from "behind" the antenna as well.

I have hills, trees and mountains to that block my path to all those towers.

So, in summary, if you have towers say, within 70 miles away or so, this antenna should easily be able to get them.

I had been using a RCA ANT751 (smaller but about the same cost) and getting unstable reception on almost every UHF channel from NYC. This product boosted my TV's signal strength reading by only 5-10%, but I've seen zero glitching on any of my channels. They're incredibly stable so there's something more than the numbers to this. I imagine the gain on this antenna is much higher and its larger surface area receives more signal. There is little to no VHF reception on this model vs. the 751 (which is fine as Winegard doesn't claim it) so you will need a second antenna if you, like me, have a lot of VHF-HI stations to contend with.

Still - solid product, easy to assemble, and great for OTA HDTV.

This antenna was a great decision to get. I went from getting 2 channels with regular rabbit ears to getting 15. I live in a rural area with many tall trees, so getting a decent reception was a challenge for me. I installed this antenna with the Winegard signal booster and it works great. All channels come in clear.
The nearest tower for me is about 20 miles out, and I catch towers that are 40-50 miles away!
The instructions are vague, but looking at the picture its easy enough to figure. Took me about 30 minutes to put together.

No real complaints as of yet with this antenna other than it could be packed up better inside the box, this is a manufacturer issue (mine was not damaged). Antenna takes a few minutes and a little thinking to put together. The instructions are a tad hard to decipher but to be honest any monkey can do it just pay attention. Small wrench is needed, pair of pliers would work also.

I had also purchased 2 5ft masts and a roll of 100 ft cable. I went out locally and bought ground wire, grounding block and grounding clamps (have your ground plan set before you begin your install), compression connectors and had it up on the roof in minutes of getting it together. I was lucky and have permanent chimney mounts on the roof form back in the days of old antennas so install was much quicker.

The antenna arrived partially damaged, but I was able to bend some parts back to being mostly straight. Despite being forewarned, I broke the cheap plastic center connector during assembly - repaired with liberal lengths of electrical tape. As for reception, I went back to my old Yagi/corner-reflector UHF antenna. Winegard used to make good antennas, but this is lightweight junk.

Excellent antenna, especially if your digital channels are below 40. It has the highest gain of any antenna between channels 20 to 40.

When I received this item it showed signs of having been "pre-enjoyed.. a plastic piece was cracked. As I didn't want to pay return postage I tried it. I am in a fringe area and found a grey, disc shaped Radio Shack antenna for about the same price works well.