Jerry rig OTA Antenna

[milkmania]

Well, I'm too damned cheap to buy an over the air antenna, so I built one with scraps I had laying around... I connected it all up, and checked fcc.gov's website.

It said I should get 6 channels and 2 would be weak.


I took 2 pieces of small opening expanded steel that I harvested from my bus's old a/c unit. (I don't believe it's aluminum, but it's something non-corrosive)

Took a 1.5" piece of conduit about 8' long and put it in an old dishnetwork tri-pod, made a top and bottom horizontal bar out of 3/4" PEX tubing, crossed over the expanded steel in an X pattern separating them with another piece of PEX, held in place with a big zip tie. Took 2 alligator clip jumper wires and connected them to the X and a 75ohm to 300ohm converter. Then coax to tv. (Making sure all connections were isolated left & right, respective of the crossover)

Set the tv to scan channels.... I picked up 18

I'll get a picture of my jerry rig when it's light outside.

I'm out $3.00 for the converter.

 

[superdave-SKO]

the camper antennas are great, worth there weight in gold. when my home antenna wouldn't get anything I would go out to the camper and get them all. the government really screwed the public when they went digital. so much harder to pic anything up.

 

[milkmania]

the camper antennas are great, worth there weight in gold. when my home antenna wouldn't get anything I would go out to the camper and get them all. the government really screwed the public when they went digital. so much harder to pic anything up.

Proves the government doesn't know what's going on when it says I should get 6 channels and I get 18...

I figure the mesh is stainless steel... Way too heavy for aluminum and it's not magnetic. Either way, works perfect! All 18 channels have no pixelation.

 

[DoubleO7]

those "in the know" say there is no such thing as a "HD digital antenna".
That all of the fancy death ray gun looking antennas marketed as the one you need are just marketing ploys.

I think you proved it true.