ATSC Antenna

[nitrogen_widget]

I've got an HV-1600. It works great on the analog side & actually fairly good on the digital side.

My main problem with OTA is that my stations are S, SW, & SE of me.
I bought a $30 apmlified antenna & that works great if I aim it.

I can always get the S stations, but can only get SW or SE with it.

It's not an ideal setup for recording HD & digital TV.
I'm thinking of building two homemade DB2 antennas & point one SE & one SW in the attic & leave the amplified on the TV facing south & tieing them all together to cover all the directions.

I've got all the material to build the cheapie antennas so i'm leaning that way instead of a big antenna on my roof.

But, I don't know if the amp on the one antenna will cause problems with the signal coming off the other two.

Anybody got an idea?

[pBS]

you'll probably have to play with it to get a good signal on all..
i found 4 bowtie to pick up in all directions so you might wanna try that all by itself first...i actually use a 2 bowtie indoors and it works better than my huge old style on the roof...
but as always with antennas, YMMV

[nitrogen_widget]

I did some searching myself & found plans for a DIY 4 Bow-Tie Antenna.
I'm going to i'm going to make that & see how it works.

I think a directional antenna just won't work for me.

[carpeVideo]

You could also try building one of these - its on my when I have time list:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/index.htm

[nitrogen_widget]

You could also try building one of these - its on my when I have time list:
http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/index.htm

That's the DIY antenna I found.
I guess it's actually a 3 bow-tie or a 2 if you don't count the halves.

[bogyver]

fyi next year after the dtv transition some, not all, but some stations are going to be moving back to there vhf channel and other that are broadcasting above channel 51 will move to a channel below 51 since 52 to 69 have been sold in the 700mhz auction.
It just something to keep in mind for the future and with what kind of antenna you build

[zed]

Are you sure about that? Moving a TV station from one channel to another takes a lot more than just turning a dial. Pretty much the entire transmitter/antenna system is designed and built for a specific frequency (channel), not to mention that the digital stuff is different than analog. I'd be a bit surprised if a station would be willing to (or could afford to) move back to their old analog channel after shelling out big bucks to convert to digital on a different channel.

[whurlston]

Stations have the option of remaining on the temporary frequency that they used for digital transmission over the last few years or returning to their original frequency which is currently used for analog transmission, so long as that frequency is not in one of the blocks being sold. The choice is entirely up to the broadcasting station.

[zed]

Thanks for the clarification. Still, it seems like it'd be a lot of hassle to change back, both for the station and the viewers (who'd have to re-map their channels). And I don't think the old analog gear would work for digital (for one thing, aren't the digital channels wider?). Oh well...I'm sure better minds than mine have figured it all out...

[Deusxmachina]

Analog or digital doesn't matter. It's VHF or UHF spectrum that matters. ONE of my local stations is going to likely go back to it's old station number next year, 11, which will be the lowest spectrum channel and thus probably cause my DB4 clone some trouble. 11 might be do-able with a DB4, but it'd be even worse if it was lower like channel 4.

Speaking of DB4 clones, I tried the homemade ones and they didn't work too well. They are not complicated things, so I can only guess the bad reception was from using coat hangers with a coating over the metal or that particular metal didn't have the best conducive qualities.

I had ground them off to the metal where the screws and washers connected, but it didn't help. Went and bought a generic DB4 for $25 and it worked MUCH better and is just good enough to catch everything being the stations are about 45 degrees max apart at 20 miles. Any wider and I'd need two antennas or maybe mounted ten feet higher. When I saw the nice DB4 clone in the store local for $25 new, trying to make my own out of other kinds of metal wasn't too high on my to-do list anymore.