[kwlug-disc] Home made indoor TV Antenna

Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account) aklists at mixdown.ca
Tue Jul 8 01:41:56 EDT 2014


On Jul 8, 2014, at 1:17 AM, William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> When it comes to antenna, it's the aperture (area collecting the signal)
> that counts.  Your 8-bay is the best option because it has the largest
> aperture in the market.  I wish people not confuse Physics with Linux.
> There are no 500 different distros of Physics, and no 8 different ways
> of compiling Physics.  

Physics is physics (and Linux is Linux, but that’s another discussion entirely). You usually trade off directionality for gain. A few years ago there wasn’t really anything in close range, so I selected a 9.8dBi Yagi design, which is highly directional. I’ve posted specifics about my setup several times in this mailing list before, but basically I was only interested in hitting the CN tower. I built a custom 4:1 shorted-stub current balun and used a Kitztech LNA mounted at the antenna.

Long story short, I managed to be able to pull in every station from the CN tower, with the weakest stations being a bit spotty in poorer weather. I also picked up Hamilton and several US stations (although the US stations are absolute screamers compared to anything in Canada). I’m fairly confident that you wouldn’t achieve the same thing with gigantic 8-bay “panel” style antenna. If you’re already committed to using a rotor, there’s not really anything to gain in using a lower-gain, wider-area antenna such as the patch panels.

In my opinion the real benefits are gained through a decent balun and LNA. The signals you’re interested in are so weak that unless you’re optimizing power transfer and minimizing noise gained through amplification you’ll end up with a “loud” noisy signal at best or a blue screen/snow at worst. Either way your wallet will be lighter.

-A.






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