HDTV Antenna_A Radio Shack Mod

This is a further development of the antenna shown by dragosurf, https://www.instructables.com/id/Stylish-HDTV-Antenna/. It is his design attached to a powered Radio Shack antenna (15-1880) sold about ten years ago. I am using this in our family room, which is half below ground. The RS antenna (as sold) was not able to pick-up and hold any of the digital signals in the Fort Wayne, IN area. It now picks-up and holds all available digital stations. I removed the two rabbit ears and were for VHF and the UHF bow-tie element. I then connected this antenna to the wires that had been connected to the UHF element. The mesh dish that I used to attached the antenna acts as a reflector.  I now have an excellent HDTV antenna..

Comments

[klaatu2]

The easiest HDTV trick is to take a VHF/UHF 20db gain antenna amplifier like Radio Shack used to sell and use it with practically any antenna you can make to get a strong enough signal to watch digital tv with. Don't settle for a similar looking brick-only distribution amplifiers since they only provide about 10db gain. The 20+db gain ones have a small balun sized remote amp intended to go on an old rooftop mounted antenna (300 ohm terminals with 75 ohm coax downlink) and a brick shaped power / control unit for the inside the house, tv end that supplies dc current power to the amp over the connecting segment of coax while isolating the DC power and only passing the signal through to the receiver. If your indoor antenna already has a 75 ohm coax output, just use a terminal screw strip and a balun to adapt it to the 300 ohm twinlead the amp is expecting. A short coax jumper from the amp to its power box and another coax from the box to your tuner and you're in business. Don't forget to dial back the gain adjustment on the power box if its too strong a signal for you.