Anybody made their own TV antenna(s)?
I'm starting to experiment with that. There are so many designs to choose from, depending on what you want it to do.
I'm using a single-tuner USB stick with software on my laptop or phone, so I can leave my current MythTV/antenna setup alone until I decide what I want.
I have a mix of strong/weak channels N, S, and W through trees. Current setup works most of the time, but I get a few glitchy recordings, and want to fix that if I can.
My first experiment was a folded dipole tuned for RF 26 to see if I could pick up a 40-mile away station that is unwatchable with my current antenna. Just a thick piece of solid copper ground wire hand-bent into shape following this calculator for 545mhz:
https://www.changpuak.ch/electronics/Dipole_folded.php
Connected with a 300-75 balun. The station I tuned it for came in rock-solid! Even most other closer channels I checked in the channel 30 range, but as expected not the few VHF-HI I have.
I know it's difficult if not impossible to combine antennas without actually making the end result worse, but I may add more tuners, some with a wide-band antenna and others with an antenna optimized for a specific frequency. Anyway, I have a project for summer.
Home made antenna?
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