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Two years back I decided to make my own antenna. I had no idea what a folded dipole was, but found a website that instructed me to use a metal clothes hanger cu
by z2 11y ago
Two years back I decided to make my own antenna. I had no idea what a folded dipole was, but found a website that instructed me to use a metal clothes hanger cut to the proper length for HD US signals, and a block of wood. I had neither so I taped some leftover enamel wire to a piece of cardboard. I still use this antenna today, and get about 50 channels, living 30 miles away from the nearest broadcast antenna.
Point is, these broadcasts are incredibly easy to access, and it doesn't seem like the voodoo designs of $200 dollar antennas are actually needed by most people. It's somewhat surprising TV manufacturers don't simply add simple antennas as an accessory the same way my FM radio tuner came with one.
- JTon 11y agoAwesome. Care to share the resources you used for this project?
- z2 11y agoIt may have been this page, though I'm pretty sure the resource I used told me what length to cut it. http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php http://www.diytvantennas.com/dipole.php Still, we can figure this out: Wikipedia says North American UHF frequencies are on average 680MHz across all channels, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 44cm. A folded dipole needs to have a length half of that, so we want a 22cm antenna when folded, plus about a 1cm gap.
- PretzelFisch 11y agoThis is the typical design I see offered in most how tutorials. http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/ http://makezine.com/projects/digital-tv-coat-hanger-antenna/
- Animats 11y agoAt the UHF frequencies digital TV is using, antenna location and direction matter more than antenna design. If you have line of sight to the transmitter, almost anything will work. The article talks about antennas having become an exotic product. That's just not true. WalMart has a good selection of outdoor TV antennas, starting from $20.[1] Home Depot also has a selection, but many of theirs still have the VHF elements, which you don't need and make the antenna much bigger, harder to mount, and more vulnerable to winds. WalMart's selection indicates that many WalMart customers are getting TV from antennas. [1] http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/outdoor-tv-antenna
- PretzelFisch 11y agoThere are many areas where digital is still broadcast over VHF.
- kale 11y agoLess than 2% of TV stations went back to Low band VHF after the transition. I'm in one of those areas where one station decided to go back to low VHF after analog was shut off, and it's an NBC affiliate (and NASCAR and SNL are really the main two things I want to watch). I just got finished building a folded dipole specifically for this channel (6 foot half-wavelength). It works great beside the TV, it's not really doing great in my attic. I'm going to try and re-position it more than a wavelength off of the roofline and see if that helps.
- PretzelFisch 11y agoyou might want to look into a yagi antenna design.
- Phlarp 11y agoThe requirements for a working antenna are actually pretty loose-- In most cases the TV will have two RCA jack inputs; one for cable and one for an antenna but the coax cable that goes from the wall to the TV will generally work just fine as an antenna if you plug it into the antenna jack and remove it from the wall so just the cord hangs off the back of your TV. If you are in an optimal RF location (within a mile or two of the transmitter, no major obstructions, low noise floor, clear conditions etc) it should generally be possible to pick up OTA signals without any antenna at all.