[ale] HDTV antenna for urban areas

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Wed Jun 3 12:16:43 EDT 2009


crap signal is still crap signal. However, a bit of engineering will
boost the signal. The trash can was a great way to dispense with the
bounced signals that are noise while also boosting the real signal.

While the transmission of the tv data is digital, it's still an analog
carrier wave and that can be amplified by an old analog amp.

The sad news is they haven't updated much of the content....

OK, so the 2 PBS channels look good and are often enjoyable.

On Wed, Jun 3, 2009 at 11:28 AM, Bob Toxen<transam at verysecurelinux.com> wrote:
> 1. What's the price of each component?
>
> 2. Can an existing analog antenna and amp be used?
>
> 3. Am I likely to get a clean signal if I only get a poor analog
>   signal where I am?
>
> The idea is can I use my existing analog equipment that I gave up on
> due to poor signal and insufficient interest for another solution for
> analog?
>
> [Yeah, I got a $50 converter at Target with a $40 taxpayer-supplied
> rebate.]
>
> thx,
> Bob
> [Who kicked out the cable company 9 years ago.]
>
> "One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
> them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where
> the shadows lie...and the Eye is everwatching"
> -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh with ... by Bob
> On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 09:48:37PM -0400, Daniel Howard wrote:
>> As a small token of my appreciation to the list, and since some folks
>> have posted recently about setting up off air HDTV reception with the
>> transition date looming, I thought you guys would enjoy some solutions
>> I've run across for dealing with the extensive multipath you get in
>> dense urban areas for HDTV reception.  Enjoy, Daniel
>>
>> 1.  My solution: I have two RadioShack large aperture/gain antennas in
>> my attic, each with a low noise amp at the antenna output, and I have an
>> A/B switch in my TV room such that when I see multipath interfering with
>> reception on one antenna, I switch to the other.  The antennas have to
>> be at least 10 lambda apart however since their gain is so high, and at
>> VHF frequencies for Channel 11 (around 200 MHz), this is about 48 ft.,
>> Using a spectrum analyzer revealed the multipath was spatially
>> decorrelated between the two antennas in my attic even though they were
>> only 40 ft. apart.
>>
>> I had to use this solution because I'm in a valley topographically with
>> buildings and land blocking my direct line of sight to the antenna
>> towers.
>>
>> 2.  If you have line of sight to the towers (use www.antennaweb.org),
>> but have lots of big buildings around you, you just need a really
>> directional antenna, here's what my friend at GaTech used.  Make sure to
>> click page two at the bottom of the web site for the second, more robust
>> and easier to manufacture solution that he came up with, brilliant IMHO.
>>
>> http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~wn17/
>>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness



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