Homemade Antennae for 35 miles?

 http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=381623
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=444398

Quote:
Rack...another Nw Indiana native?


Too little time to read the 60-120 pages of posts to find what I need on this one - bad planning on my part.

Any antenna you have lying around should work, might need a balun as well. Those are just the two threads where 1) they know antennas and 2) use antennas in the Chicagoland area (this thread will probably get merged into one of those two).


If you have some twin-lead lying around, there's always something like this:
http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/dipole.html

In simple terms, a UHF dipole should have two elements that are about 5" long each, for a total width of about 10"


If you have twin lead, then slit it back five inches and tape the two wires to something rigid but non-inductive, like a plastic hanger.


If you only have coax, slit the outer jacket back 5 or so inches and then cut it off, then twirl the shield wires in your finger until they look like a wire. Or, if they are a woven braid, you can open up a hole in the side of it and pull the insulated center conductor through it and then tape it to a plastic hanger.


About twenty years ago, when I needed temporary indoor antenna for several UHF stations, I just took the curtain off a curtain rod and hung my home-made dipole from the curtain rod, and if I didn't get a good picture when I changed channels, I just took a broom handle and used it to slide the dipole along the rod to wherever the reeption was best.

35 miles might be a bit far, unless you have good line-of-sight.


We have used a coathanger at 17 miles. Cut the hook and the adjacent "U" off, so you have a 1/2" or so gap. Clean the ends and solder a balun to them (or, put alligator clips on the balun's wires). A couple of suction cups hold it, upside down, to the window glass.

 http://www.hdtvprimer.com/ANTENNAS/comparing.html

I'd go with the UHF loop. I used one in Saint John, IN. I think that was 31 miles (and at 700 feet of elevation!) from the Sears Tower as the crow flies. I had mine in the attic at the time, with the rabbit ears fully extended (93 inches tip-to-tip!) for WBBM-DT 3. You'll get a couple dBd of gain out of the loop, and being all the way outside should be enough.

Quote:
The optimal length of a tuned dipole varies with signal frequency and dipole element veliocity. For low numbered UHF channels, you might do a little better with 6" leads.


The intractible problem that mikecazzx faces is that in the Chicago market, there is a digital lowband channel (3, I believe) for which there is no cheap, indoor solution, as it needs an antenna about nine feet wide and is susceptible to impulse noise.

 http://www.usahardware.com/inet/shop...ni/mant250.htm

This is what I'm using right now. The extra-long 44" ears do come in handy. Then I put a metal shelving shelf behind it to act like a reflector for a couple extra points of signal quality.