DennisWef
03-02-2016,
Offline muldoon
Journeyman
*****
Posts: 1,618
Muldoon, TX
DIY HDTV Antenna
? on: November 10, 2009, 07:20:45 AM ?
I thought I would post this writeup I did on making an antenna for use to pick up HDTV over the air signals out in the fringe areas. I know plenty of people here live out in the sticks and may find this cheap DIY (and bulletproof) solution agreeable.
After looking on the web for antennas to pick up local channels out in fringe areas I basically was discouraged to see the options available to me were all north of 100 bucks, with no guarentee they would work at the 70 mile range I needed. I dug around a bit more and found some online plans to make clones of the more popular models, notably DB4 and DB8.
http://www.antennasdirect.com/DB8_HD_Antenna.html
I was hoping to get some football and maybe pbs if possible. After looking over some plans I had a plan of attack.
http://www.tvantennaplans.com/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Large-DB8-HDTV-Antenna-Big-Bertha/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14860111
http://forums.makezine.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2890
It was made from an old metal discarded shelf, some coathanger wire, a splitter, some romex, a few scraps of 2x4, and 2 baluns or matching transormers. My cost was about 9 dollars aside from what I already had on hand.
Te test run at home in the city picked up 40+ channels, and they looked great.
For the real test, I took it up to the country this past weekend. It was a success.
It was mounted in a loft, using heavy duty screweyes and a few links of adjustable chain. The tuning and aiming was done by adjusting the large eyebolt it anchors to. After trying many variations we found the best position was exactly the one we started with as suggested by the tvfool website and aiming directions. Great resource if your going to do this as well, especially the google map integration that helps you understand the range of networks and what you would need to capture the signals.
Picked up every UHF channel in a 70 mile range, giving 9 channels in HD goodness and allowing college football on Saturday and NFL football all day sunday from three different networks. It was a thing of beauty.
However, it does not pick up Fox out of Austin, which broadcasts on channel 7, the hi-band of VHF. Given this is a UHF antenna (channels 14-69), this is not entirely unexpected. I will be adding two dipole additions to this next trip up in hopes of bringing in the channel 7, and perhaps the channel 5 CW network at 103 miles out. to be continued then ...
Journeyman
*****
Posts: 1,618
Muldoon, TX
DIY HDTV Antenna
? on: November 10, 2009, 07:20:45 AM ?
I thought I would post this writeup I did on making an antenna for use to pick up HDTV over the air signals out in the fringe areas. I know plenty of people here live out in the sticks and may find this cheap DIY (and bulletproof) solution agreeable.
After looking on the web for antennas to pick up local channels out in fringe areas I basically was discouraged to see the options available to me were all north of 100 bucks, with no guarentee they would work at the 70 mile range I needed. I dug around a bit more and found some online plans to make clones of the more popular models, notably DB4 and DB8.
http://www.antennasdirect.com/DB8_HD_Antenna.html
I was hoping to get some football and maybe pbs if possible. After looking over some plans I had a plan of attack.
http://www.tvantennaplans.com/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-Large-DB8-HDTV-Antenna-Big-Bertha/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14860111
http://forums.makezine.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=2890
It was made from an old metal discarded shelf, some coathanger wire, a splitter, some romex, a few scraps of 2x4, and 2 baluns or matching transormers. My cost was about 9 dollars aside from what I already had on hand.
Te test run at home in the city picked up 40+ channels, and they looked great.
For the real test, I took it up to the country this past weekend. It was a success.
It was mounted in a loft, using heavy duty screweyes and a few links of adjustable chain. The tuning and aiming was done by adjusting the large eyebolt it anchors to. After trying many variations we found the best position was exactly the one we started with as suggested by the tvfool website and aiming directions. Great resource if your going to do this as well, especially the google map integration that helps you understand the range of networks and what you would need to capture the signals.
Picked up every UHF channel in a 70 mile range, giving 9 channels in HD goodness and allowing college football on Saturday and NFL football all day sunday from three different networks. It was a thing of beauty.
However, it does not pick up Fox out of Austin, which broadcasts on channel 7, the hi-band of VHF. Given this is a UHF antenna (channels 14-69), this is not entirely unexpected. I will be adding two dipole additions to this next trip up in hopes of bringing in the channel 7, and perhaps the channel 5 CW network at 103 miles out. to be continued then ...