easy digital antenna

[skymaster]

skymaster here,

antenna with very little cost.

1 dowel rod or fiberglass marking rod used in marking boundaries in the snow, they are orange about 5 ft n length. cut to about 2 ft in length.i eyeballed them. i could have used antenna theory since I'm a ham but thought , lets try a common length close to the frequencies the digital stations use.


take wire,insulated or bare and tape to dowel rod making sure you have several inches for connections in the middle of dowel rod. then take a tv balun and connect it to the wire.one connection on the left, and one on the right. seal with tape or silicon sealant. use whatever you have.then go buy the extendable paint poles that home depot and menards sell. mine was for about 25 dollars.you can adjust the height of your antenna with a few twists and pushes.secure the rod with the balun to the paint pole with a few tie wraps. connect rg6 and enjoy. my house has three tis one in the front room my sons bedroom and my bedroom. we are able to receive over 40 channels with this setup

i will take pictures tomorrow and post.

skymaster

[skymaster]

skymaster here,

its basically a simple dipole thats not cut to resonance. my sons is about 3 ft total. the one for the front room and bedroom is bout 2 feet. using a paint pole makes it easy to find the sweet spot for signals.i receive 4 channels from illinois, and many from indy and north from south bend tv 28, etc. anyway i will take pics tomorrow and post.hint. cut ur rods long and when u cut the rod with the wire on it, cut the same amount on the other side. that way ur not building it too small. for ur own area cut until some of ur weaker signals start to increase.thats how i did mine with out going into the half wave dipole formula which is easy, but i had two people wanting to watch this old house on bps and i only had about 15 mins to make it happen before our show started. we had wind and a limb smashed into my antenna i bought at a box store and supposedly this was the best they sold. needless to say my eyeball antenna beat the store bought one and about 1/20 the size of theirs.

skymaster

[skymaster]

skymaster here,

here are my pics of my simple antennas. one antenna with a regular 1 inch pipe and the other with the extendable paint pole. with the paint pole you can bring it down anytime without climbing.

[skymaster]

well it didn't post right so i will try again.


skymaster

[skymaster]

skymaster here,

sorry for the mistakes. my phone files was putting out o bites of info after i uploaded. have one good pic of the paint pole with antenna. pretty simple.since the signal is digital its either there or its not. I'm going to experiment with a mast installed amplifier later to see if i can get up to 60 channels to increase signal level so my tv tuner will recognize it. anyway if you have an antenna project these paint poles that are extendable, really make it handy to not climb. and if you want to try out different antennas, no climbing ,fast recovery by loosening the bottom nut then the other one. mine extends to 25 ft.

hope this helps someone on a tight budget like me.

skymaster

[skymaster]

to improve this  easy antenna you could build a yagi style antenna with match for cable to eliminate balun. but i took the lazy way out . especially when i only had 15 mins prior to this old house show