also known as digital.

The frequency range is between 54Mhz - 700Mhz if I read the specs right.

Near as I can tell, the old television antennas would work fine for the new standards.

When my TV died analog was on its way out, and I didn't have the interest to buy a new TV. Now I have room mate who is interested in TV, so I'm working on getting my old switch RF box and antenna set up going again. The old TV antenna I had up is a thing of the past, we have had high winds many time it did not survive, and without a TV I didn't worry about it.

Now I'm thinking of DIY. Something like this...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/how-to/a6608/build-your-own-digital-tv-antenna/

I get the feeling there is an awful lot of hype on the subject. A basic decent yagi (old style) with a RF preamp would work just fine. So, I was wondering what other opinions were on the subject.

I would consider myself very experienced with RF in general, but it never hurts to ask for other opinions.

 

Hello Wendy,

The shown antenna is basicaly for UHF (470 - 860 Mhz).
I know this type with a raster on one side to make it directional and have some gain.
Then it looks like this:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rabinal/32282093/in/album-710532/

For a wide band with some gain, you might want to have a look at the log-periodic antenna:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log-periodic_antenna

Bertus

 

First thing to do, is go to http://www.tvfool.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
and get yourself a listing of the available channels (that you're interested in watching). The listing will give you enough information to determine if the makeshift antenna will do a good enough job for your needs. The antenna you show has basically a radiation pattern that looks like this (>|<). If you're in a location where your desired stations are broadside to you, then that antenna will work well.

As Bertus said, there are still some remaining VHF transmitters out there, but most of them are gone. The TV Fool info will tell you this. I have about 35 transmitters sending out a DTV signal and only 1 is VHF. This is why most DTV antennas are simply the "old" UHF style. Even with a UHF style antenna, I still receive a powerful signal on the one VHF station.

I am lucky in that I am north of one antenna farm and south of another. That means that I get away with one UHF antenna pointing north and one pointing south. I can reliably pull in a station 61 miles to my north.

Forget about all the hype about "DTV ready" antennas. They have essentially been "DTV ready" since the early days of television. All of my antennas are "pre-DTV".

 

I put my moms zip into TVFOOL. WFAA is channel 8 and KFWD is channel 9 real for local Dallas channels but the rest are UHF so a UHF, with some useful VHF HI range antenna would be needed for best reception of all signals. Most Bowtie arrays will work OK in the strong area for VHF HI.
http://m4antenna.eastmasonvilleweather.com/index.html

 

http://www.diytvantennas.com/index.php

An even better site. It is better at giving the dimensions.

 

http://www.highdefforum.com/local-h...98-hobbyists-create-diy-super-tv-antenna.html

If you have questions on anything, this might be a good place to search

 

http://www.highdefforum.com/local-h...98-hobbyists-create-diy-super-tv-antenna.html

If you have questions on anything, this might be a good place to search

Or use a time-machine to buy a similar antenna from 1971.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1971-c/h292.html