While searching for a link for my brother on building antennas for HDTV (you guys are all ready for the oncoming digital TV Apocalypse, aren’t you?) I found this interesting link on an antenna which seems very good, and suitable for amateur construction. Seems like I could use some of the 12 gauge wire I used to make my Cheap Yagi to make this antenna in an hour or so. Might be a fun experiment, although since I live at the bottom of a rather narrow valley, I doubt it will render hdtv service tenable at my current location.
The Gray-Hoverman Antenna For UHF Television Reception – Digital Home Canada.
Addendum: Here’s a link to the general dimensions for the single bay version. It’s got two layers: he first has a pair of zig zag elements, and the “reflectors” are 100mm behind. Should be quite simple to fabricate.
This was an interesting article. It indicates that you might want to hold off on building your high gain UHF arrays. That’s at least until you figure out what your local broadcasters are going to do. It appears they may be switching back into the high VHF band when analog service ends later in the week.
http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages_b/MusicalChairs.html
this antenna is basically the same as all country antennas were once upon a time in Western Australia.
Except the front elements were horizontal as well.
In between each frontal dipole ran a phasing harness which crossed over between each level. This antenna provided TV reception to remote farms all across our state.
Only four dipole/reflector elements were ever used, I never saw more than one array ever.
When I see large wideband arrays in the city that cover the same band, it is amazing.
The country farms could pull in sound and vision 200 miles away from a city.
cheers from sunny Perth Western Australia.
Hope I WSPR you some day on my 48″ diameter loop.
I am in the UK, and simply can’t browse anything from the Digital Home forum, except on very rare occasions. I understand they basically ban all IP addresses outside North America.
But they don’t even have an explanation on their website any more, if you click “read here”, you just get a form to send a message to the owner. Very poor show. Oh yes, they don’t bother replying either. I have heard that the webmaster, Hugh Thompson, is a racist.