Home made Digital TV Antenna
Most people who know me know that I don't watch much TV. TV is my ADD trigger or something. If there is a TV on, I can't help myself but to watch it. So, I keep making TVs into fishtanks or otherwise getting rid of them.
I do have 1 TV that I like (besides my fishtank TV). A friend from an old job gave it to me, thanks Trudi! It is a small, black and white 5 inch AM/FM/TV with AV in. It can run on internal batteries. I mean, it's the perfect emergency TV. Great for Hurricane Country. The best part, is it came with a schematic. I can fix the goofy thing if it ever died.
Well, come Feb of 2009, the antenna won't work anymore. So I picked up a Digital TV converter with analog pass through. The analog passthrough is important to me because I will be playing with enough old video stuff that not having it could be a pain.
Anyway. I hooked it up. No TV. Didn't surprise me, as I don't get regular TV clearly with the internal antenna.
A challenge.
So, I started looking online for quick and easy, DIY TV antennas.
I found one!
Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna: Better Than Store Bought! AMAZING! - The funniest bloopers are right here
It looked like a fairly good VHF UHF antenna.
I made one. It took me about an hour. I got to play with my torch. Any night is a good night when you get to play with fire, right? My soldering iron isn't hot enough to work well with the 12 gauge solid wire I used for the antenna.
I took a video with my Hi-Def video camera of my five inch TV getting High Definition Broadcast Digital Television. Kinda ironic, isn't it?
I get 10 stations for 25 channels? Is that how you say that? A lot of each station has multiple channels in them. The only really important channel I get is the Weather Channel.
A really good website to visit to see what you should expect for TV reception is TV Fool. I am getting about what it says that I should.
I am thinking I will make a 'cleaner' antenna. I want to get a matching transformer on this antenna to see if that works better. I will also be making a few other types over the winter I think. Just stuff to play around with.
I did notice that if I hook my converter box up to the antenna on the foot and a half cable I left myself, I don't get much for reception, but if I use the 40 foot cable I have, I get much better reception. I will need to investigate cable length for reception and such. I am guessing that the long cable is helping match the antenna to to the receiver. Just a hunc though.
I do have 1 TV that I like (besides my fishtank TV). A friend from an old job gave it to me, thanks Trudi! It is a small, black and white 5 inch AM/FM/TV with AV in. It can run on internal batteries. I mean, it's the perfect emergency TV. Great for Hurricane Country. The best part, is it came with a schematic. I can fix the goofy thing if it ever died.
Well, come Feb of 2009, the antenna won't work anymore. So I picked up a Digital TV converter with analog pass through. The analog passthrough is important to me because I will be playing with enough old video stuff that not having it could be a pain.
Anyway. I hooked it up. No TV. Didn't surprise me, as I don't get regular TV clearly with the internal antenna.
A challenge.
So, I started looking online for quick and easy, DIY TV antennas.
I found one!
Coat Hanger HDTV Antenna: Better Than Store Bought! AMAZING! - The funniest bloopers are right here
It looked like a fairly good VHF UHF antenna.
I made one. It took me about an hour. I got to play with my torch. Any night is a good night when you get to play with fire, right? My soldering iron isn't hot enough to work well with the 12 gauge solid wire I used for the antenna.
I took a video with my Hi-Def video camera of my five inch TV getting High Definition Broadcast Digital Television. Kinda ironic, isn't it?
I get 10 stations for 25 channels? Is that how you say that? A lot of each station has multiple channels in them. The only really important channel I get is the Weather Channel.
A really good website to visit to see what you should expect for TV reception is TV Fool. I am getting about what it says that I should.
I am thinking I will make a 'cleaner' antenna. I want to get a matching transformer on this antenna to see if that works better. I will also be making a few other types over the winter I think. Just stuff to play around with.
I did notice that if I hook my converter box up to the antenna on the foot and a half cable I left myself, I don't get much for reception, but if I use the 40 foot cable I have, I get much better reception. I will need to investigate cable length for reception and such. I am guessing that the long cable is helping match the antenna to to the receiver. Just a hunc though.
posted by Mike @ 12:22 AM
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