# home brew hd antenna



## dvrhdtvuser (Jan 23, 2008)

heres an idea for an antenna. make a triangle tower with 2foot sides about 4 foot tall. make four rows of the >< on each side. i have a problem where my locals are south and my cbs feed is due west. my thinking is the reception field from each side would cross to get a omnidirectional reception. after you guys are done laughing 
your butts off, let me know what i can do to get my locals with one antenna without paying buttloads of money. thanks


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## racermurray (Mar 21, 2007)

I feel your pain as my OTA's are also about 90 degrees apart.

After trial and error with several antenna's I have found the
"Terrestrial Digital DB8" antenna works for me.

www.terrestrial-digital.com

Try aiming it halfway between your towers , it has a beam width of about 100 degrees.

Good Luck
Murray


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## girdnerg (May 17, 2007)

If you do the homemade >< style antenna like the cm4228 (or lesser models) and leave the screen off the back it should be bi-directional. I've seen plans for it on the net and over at avsforum.

My previous antenna was virtually omni-directional and I picked up stations from both east and west. The problem was multi-path tho. My main stations would come in with a 90% strength, but would drop to 0% every 10 seconds or so. In the end I had to put up a very directional antenna which completely killed the signal off the back side. Now my main stations are very solid. Lucky for me, the ones off the back where just duplicates as all the mains are coming from one antenna farm.

It's definately worth a try, especially DIY, since it will be so cheap.

Rob


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## Rob Glasser (Feb 22, 2005)

Just to throw my 2 cents in. In my area most of my stations are almost due south, except for my FOX station which is west-southwest. 

I first went out and bought a CM4228 thinking bigger is better but I could not get FOX and everything else at the same time, it was either FOX or the rest.

Based on a recommendation by a local OTA installer that posted to the Seattle OTA thread on AVSForum I went out and got the smaller CM4221. Basically he said since it's a single set of bowties it actually has a wider range for picking up signal. He said that the larger 8 bowtie antennas (i.e. CM4228) are more directional because the 2 sets kind of cancel each other out.

Anyways, I setup the CM4221 and I was able to get a sweet spot that picked up all stations and it's been working smoothly for a few years now.


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## bbomar (Oct 18, 2004)

dvrhdtvuser said:


> heres an idea for an antenna. make a triangle tower with 2foot sides about 4 foot tall. make four rows of the >< on each side. i have a problem where my locals are south and my cbs feed is due west. my thinking is the reception field from each side would cross to get a omnidirectional reception. after you guys are done laughing
> your butts off, let me know what i can do to get my locals with one antenna without paying buttloads of money. thanks


You might want to consider two antennas connected with a JoinTenna coupler:

http://www.warrenelectronics.com/antennas/Jointennas.htm


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## Miner (Oct 29, 2004)

Like Rob sometimes it works. I live west of Seattle and the main channels are all from Seattle nearly due east and the local fox is nearly due south, literally 90 degrees from the rest. Right now, I have a yagi aimed at the Seattle towers and am still able to receive fox just as reliably. It helps to be only 8 or 9 miles from that tower.

Miner


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## dvrhdtvuser (Jan 23, 2008)

i took the yagi off of a channel master i had in the attic. by removing it, it gives me freedom to move it around and fine tune it. i hope it works. i made another bowtie array and tried to aim but had no improvement. i actually lost my fox 59 channel all together. my other channels did stabilize however. i running this concoction through
a channel master preamp box then to a channel master amplifier then to the 722.
my next move is to remover bowties and use the yagi exclusively. ill report back. thanks for the info though im learning quick. its fun getting free hd. i did hear dish
is gonna offer 10.00 per month hdtv programming. less channels but definitely hd.
the tech also said something about a new receiver around the same time.


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## whatchel1 (Jan 11, 2006)

dvrhdtvuser said:


> i took the yagi off of a channel master i had in the attic. by removing it, it gives me freedom to move it around and fine tune it. i hope it works. i made another bowtie array and tried to aim but had no improvement. i actually lost my fox 59 channel all together. my other channels did stabilize however. i running this concoction through
> a channel master preamp box then to a channel master amplifier then to the 722.
> my next move is to remover bowties and use the yagi exclusively. ill report back. thanks for the info though im learning quick. its fun getting free hd. i did hear dish
> is gonna offer 10.00 per month hdtv programming. less channels but definitely hd.
> the tech also said something about a new receiver around the same time.


By using mismatched ants the phasing will be nearly if not impossible. You need matching ants + the Join Tenna coupler + most likely the lenght of the coax between the 2 ants will need to be made exactly the same.


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## wje (Mar 8, 2006)

Not only am I 50 miles from the stations I want to get OTA, the Boston stations are about 100 degrees from the NH stations. I use 2 CM4228's and a simple passive combiner at the antennas, followed by a line amp. Works like a charm.


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## Mr.72 (Feb 2, 2007)

a monopole will be omnidirectional in the horizontal plane if you orient it vertically. that is, standing up pointing to the sky. however you most likely don't need one. a dipole laid horizontally will be bidirectional and is very easy to tune.

they key is to figure out the frequency of the channels and the direction, then build an antenna with only tuned elements for those channels. if you make it a monopole array and set it on its edge so the pole elements aim straight up then it will be omnidirectional in the horizontal plane and pick up stations from all directions. a tuned dipole array will have better gain and will be bidirectional when set horizontally. if there is enough frequency spectrum between the channels you are looking to pick up in different directions, then you can just aim each tuned dipole in the direction of its station and it will work fine. however you will get some phase cancellation or at least phase error in whatever range overlaps between the two antennas.

your best bet, if the signals are strong, is probably a monopole array. let's hope that you are picking up UHF channels, or that you have plenty of space for your monopoles if you plan to use them to pick up VHF because VHF monopole elements can get kinda long.


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