Cutting the cable part four
The temperatures got into the high 40’s here today in Northern New York, most of the snow melted, and so I did the balance of my antenna work.
In a previous post I had installed a small antenna to test the waters, using techniques I had found on-line. I had managed to get 8 channels, three of them very good, but I wanted the other 7 channels my chart of channels within one hundred fifty miles said I could get, so I studied antennas and builds on line, ordered some parts, built three antennas in my office (What a mess, parts everywhere), and waited for a nice day to put them up.
The first two antennas were pre-builts slightly modified to pick up what I was looking for. The UHF antennas I looked at online where closed loops, a circle, oval, with a lead on each side. The circle is completed. This is the same concept of the old style UHF antennas we used to attach to our TV sets, a circle. So with the two I purchased I pulled the connector piece and replaced it on one with a VHF connection. A VHF Connection consists of two separate pieces, they do not meet as a UHF antenna does. Think of it like the old style rabbit ears on the TV set top, each aerial is a post connection, two aerials, adjust them to better the reception.
The trouble is, you don’t want to go up on the roof to move those rabbit ears every time you want a better picture, so the idea here is to get the best compromise you can.
There are thousands of designs on-line to help you lay out your antenna, to alter it for UHF or VHF, where to place the pieces for certain frequencies. I am not going to rebuild something that isn’t broken, and so I went with stock antennas for the first two and then altered them to specs I found on-line as shown above. It might seem like a small difference, but it is actually huge. First, it made the two antennas different. If I had left them the same they could have actually received the same signals and wound up cancelling each other out; altering them prevented that, I hoped, and in the end it did. I also pointed these two similar antennas away from each other, and I lined the levels up as well. The back reflector simply improves the signal without blocking signals. The three front poles are Yagi layouts, tuned for UHF and or VHF frequencies. Take a look online and you will find thousands of layouts that will give you exact measurements, spacing, etc. I took these as they came on these two antennas.
That is all there is to these two antennas. No mysteries, no math to do. I purchased them from Walmart https://www.walmart.com/ip/Ktaxon-TA-451B-Outdoor-Amplified-HD-TV-360-Degree-Rotation-Antenna-Digital-UHF-Radio/493322075
The third antenna I designed from what I looked at ad read on-line. I’m not going to list a specific page because there are thousands upon thousands of them. Do a search for Home Built HD Antennas or Antenna Design plans something like that will get you your results.
This is my design, copyrighted for sake of this blog, feel free to copy it, as I used elements of many builds I found, and equations others had to do and I skipped because they did them. For the connection I used a 75 OHM Balun. They are easy to find, cheap, and save you having to figure out the impedance. Using it also sets you up to just connect a 75 OHM cable to it and you are done.
All together I had less than 50 dollars in all of it. It was actually less than that as I used stuff I had laying around, and as I mentioned, I re-used cable from an old Sat-TV installation to run the antennas in, so it was already there and already in the house too.
The thing is, those last seven stations are tough to do because they are in different directions, some UHF some VHF and in order to use them I have to be able to get a clear HD signal. It didn’t need to be a 5, but it needed to be up there.
I went to http://www.tvfool.com/ entered my Zip Code and got a print out of the stations I could hope to get and exact directions to them from my home. Easy as pie.
This allowed me to know where to aim to get the stations I wanted. So, today the steel roof was dry, there was not going to be another day so I did it.
I had all three antennas pre-built (Different directions and requirements to pick up the channels there). I had everything laid out and waiting.
The first thing I did was cut my hand because I forgot gloves, then my hand as I was disassembling the first antenna I had put up. So, I got down and went and got gloves, all the tools; which I shoved in my jacket pockets, and that way I would only have to actually go up on the roof one time.
The whole job took less than two hours. I went onto the flat porch roof, took down the small antenna, installed each new antenna and pointed it, hooked up the three antennas using a two into one for the first two antennas (To keep the cable lengths the same exactly) and ran the other antenna on its own line. Down on the ground I used a Two to one to run them both into the house on one line with the signals mixed.
I now have all 15 channels in HD, including Canada. I did not know that Canadian TV has a new central network. They are all working and I hooked them into Pluto TV with the My Pluto TV APP, and so now our FTA channels are right there on our Pluto TV guide.
If you don’t know, Pluto TV is free. I have it on my Roku and it works perfectly. Once you authorize the app it will add your Over The Air signals to the menu, along with the information the signal carries with it. It is awesome.
So I have gone from a little more than $250.00 a month for cable and WIFI, to approximately $10,00 for Netflix, and $16.00 for Philo. I am still paying for WIFI, for the time being, but I am building WIFI antennas as I write this to access free WIFI services. Hope this was informative for you.
Mentioned here: Cutting the cable Two and Three
Roku TV APP: https://www.roku.com/
Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/
Philo: https://try.philo.com/
Walmart Antennas: Antennas
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