How to get the channels you want from you DTV Antenna

One thing that everyone who receives TV over the airwaves should start doing is working on setting up your digital TV experience before the digital switch!  I have heard of a great many people having trouble picking up channels.  It wasn't until today that I finally got Fox.  So, I'm positive that I get every channel now, but if you are having trouble picking up a digital channel that you can get the analog equivalent for, then I have some advice on what to do.

Here are some tips for the procedure I used:

1. Tune your TV to the analog channel you are looking to get.
• Just about every analog channel should have one or more digital channels.
• Some of these are completely new channels, but others are just formatted to fit different TVs better
  
2. Move your antenna around your home while watching the TV to find the spot with best reception
• This does not have to be the spot where you will eventually mount the antenna
  
• The exact spot and direction of where you hold the antenna may change reception quality
• Higher is not always better
• Near a window is not always better.
• I got the best reception in the middle of the room about 4.5 feet off the floor
  
3. Hold the antenna in place while your TV or converter box goes through the auto-program routine...
4. Check your list of channels, and take note of how many channels are available
• Depending on your device, you may not be able to watch digital channels that the Auto-Program function does not find, even if you know the channel is there.
  
• You may decide later that you cannot live without a channel you never had before, however it may take a long time to find a single spot that receives every single channel available.
  
5. If the channel doesn't come in, then repeat steps 2 - 4 until either it works or the TV defeats you... 
• it took me 3 days and 28 antenna designs to win...
• I spent about 1.5 hours repeating steps 2 - 4 with my fractal antenna... then I won!
• WARNING: The thrill of defeating the TV may make watching the TV seem less exciting.
  
6. Once you get all the digital channels you are looking for, tune your TV to the one that was hardest to get, and seek a spot to mount your antenna.
• If you spend as much time as I have at this, you can visualise the wavelength of a digital TV signal; which is really kind of cool and sad at the same time...
• while finalising your setup keep in mind that you want to make sure your TV works while you are sitting in your normal TV viewing spot... it doesn't do you much good if you can only watch TV while standing with your hand on the ceiling...

Other than that, I'm not sure what else there is to say.

Good luck, and embrase the Digital Revolution!

Digital Antenna Experiment - Part 3

Well, I'll start with an action shot of my most recent design... and guess what;  I finally get Fox!

That's right, this little baby picks up 23 digital channels (fox has a 24 hour weather channel too.)  I think the best part is that almost every channel is high definition, and even though they pushed back the conversion to digital to June, I am much happier with Digital than I ever was with an antenna.

 Anyway, I want to get into a little bit about how I made my antenna.

For this duct-tape beauty, I actually went to the store and bought some wire.  That's right, this one isn't just peiced together with junk that I found around the house, or that people just gave to me for free.

I spent a whole $3!

All you need, is to go to your local hardware store and buy 28 inches of 6 gauge copper wire, and you might want to go to an electronics store and buy a TV-matching transformer.  The rest you can peice together from whatever you want.  it all depends on if you care about the way the thing works.

However, there is one important rule to follow... don't connect to two sides together with a piece of metal.  It won't hurt anything, but your reception will go down the tube.

So anyway... back to the instructions.

Here is a breif breakdown of how to make this antenna:

1. Get your materials
1.  32 inches of 6 gauge copper wire
• you may want extra in case you make a mistake, get extra wire in 8 inch increments, each increment will allow for 1 mistake
• The directions that originally inspired me to make this said for 18 gauge... I disagreed!
  
2. a TV (Impedance Matching) Transformer
   
• I am told that you want 300 - 50 ohms
3. duct tape and electrical tape
• (although some people say to use screws with washers)
4. A this piece of plastic about 4 X 8 inches in size
• I broke one of those magnetic picture things that you get from the dollar store.
• it wasn't one of the ones my sister got me...
5. Needle nose vice grips (I suppose you could probably use pliers)
   
• You may want two pairs, but I made do with what I had
6. A good pair of wire cutters
• or just ask the person at the hardware store to cut 6 - 8" strips
7. An 8 inch ruler
• I used a carpenter's square
  
8. A protractor
• Yet again the carpenter's square and a piece of paper...
9. A marker
   
2. Make your fractals
1. Cut an 8" piece of wire
2. Measure out and mark 1 inch increments in the copper
• you may want to make a notch in the copper because the marker can rub off
3. Draw a straight line on a piece of paper, then use the protractor (or carpenter's square) to find a 60 degree angle, and draw a second line that passes through the first line at 60 degrees.  
• You now have a 60 degree angle, and a 120 degree angle on the paper
4. bend the wire at each inch marker using this patter:

1. bend the wire 60 degrees to the left
2. Then bend the wire 120 degrees to the right
3. repeat steps one 1 and 2 two more times
4. then bend the wire 60 degrees to the left 
• Now do this 3 more times  so you have 4 fractals.
  
3. Make your dipoles (After all, this is a type of dipole antenna)
• For this, you need to take 2 straight pieces of 6" to 8 " wire
• I really don't know yet if it helps to use larger pieces of wire.
• use electrical tape to fasten one fractal to the end of each wire
• The picture best illustrates how this looks
  
4. Mount the dipoles and the transformer
• Layout your piece of plastic, and draw a few lines on it so that the antenna looks symetrical. 
• There probably is more science to what works best, but if you use duct tape, then you can experiment on your own...
• Connect one wire from the transformer to each dipole, and there you have it!

So... these are obviously simplified instructions.  I've only built two of these so far, and I haven't figured out if it is better to use thicker or thinner gauge wire, but I have to say that copper seems to work better than a coat hanger!

I would also like to take this opportunity to note that the location of your antenna is very important.  I have a 25 foot coax cable so I could move my antenna to the perfect spot. As you can see here:

I had to go all over the apartment before I found the "majic" spot where the antenna picks up all the channels and a spot where I could actually mount an antenna;  I had done similar chores with all of my other anntenna's, but I just increased my cable length, and it was worth the extra couple of bucks to get a long coax cable.


So I plan to not mess  around too much with my antenna situation for a few days... and maybe I'll actually watch a little of the TV I've worked so hard to get reception for... or maybe I'll just watch all the shows I've missed on Hulu.

but the important part is that now I have a choice between watching the shows whenever I want starting the day after they are aired on TV, or watching the shows at the mercy of the network exectutives! 

Next time: After you get your antenna, you need to actually fine tune your stations...I'll talk about my battle to get Fox, and how I finally got it done.

Digital Antenna Experiment - Part 2

Today's experiment was to try a Fractal Antenna. I have heard these are the antenna to have, and they really aren't that hard to make.

However, I did a really quick job on this one, so the angles weren't perfect. After playing with it a little bit, I think that it may be work purchasing good materials to make the antenna with.

For this one, I used two coat hangers, a transformer I had laying around, some random peice of plastic, duct tape, electrical tape, and two screws. As it turns out, I think next time I will replace the two screws with electrical tape.

I think that due to the large amount of wast that I had left over from the coat hangers, I probably could have used 1 coat hanger, but I would have had to straighten out the coat hanger completely.

So, I tried to follow these directions that I found on instructables.com but I didn't have all the stuff they said to use, and I was shooting for more of a $0 budget rather than $15.

I also opted against the reflector, but as soon as I find a scrap peice of aluminum, I will be right on that. (I may canabalize my Xbox case, there is a big peice in there... or I saw this chicken wire idea on YouTube.)


So, down to what this thing can do! Well, it still doesn't get FOX, but I can adjust the length of Coax cable that I have attached, and the antenna seems very sensitive to direction, height, and angle. Sometimes I can pick up the analog signal enough to get sound, but I haven't gotten the digital signal yet.

The real question is wether it is worth the effort. And I think the answer is yes! We have beaten the all mighty nail on the end of a Coax cable with this one! However, we didn't beat it by much. Today, while playing around with my antenna (AKA coax cable with a nail on the end) and I found that if I continually run the autoprogram feature, sometimes my antenna wouldn't pick up all the channels, however, the Coat-Hanger fractal antenna will consistantly pick up 21 channels (even though 9-2 and 51-1 are in spanish, 16-1 and 16-2 are the same, but in different resolutions, 9-3 and 28-2 are completely identical, and 33-4 is the worship channel.) So despite everything, I still have 16 completely unique channels that I can watch, including a channel for little kids (in the event that someone from my family actually comes out to Seattle with one of my neices of nephews.)

So, the coat-hnger fractal antenna is worth the time to put together in my book, and with a little bit of luck, I might be able to put one together that actually picks up FOX.

Digital Antenna Experiment - Part 1

So, lately there has been a lot of talk on the Internet about digital antennas. So, after reviewing a few videos I decided to experiment a little bit with what I happen to have laying around the house.

I have the results summary at the end if that is all you care about.

Let my start by introducing the testing environment I have. My apartment is 25 feet off the ground, and I get the best reception about 7 feet above my floor. Ground level at my location is approximately 14 feet above sea level. So, I conducted all of my tests at an elevation of 46 feet above sea level.

Most of the channels I receive are broadcast out of Seattle, WA. This means that the signals I am receiving are 10 Miles North West of my location.

So, now we can talk about the materials I used in this experiment.

I had 3 types of nails, and 1 Screw

• a 3" Galvanized Steel screw
• a 3 7/8" 6 penny rusty steel nail
• a 3 3/8" 6 penny rust-proof steel nail
• a 3 3/4" Aluminium nail

I also had 2 - 5 foot lengths of coax cable, a Jensen model TV911 amplified digital antenna, and 2 - 7" deep tin cans

• a 4 1/4" diameter can (Tin Can)
  
• a 6 1/8" diameter can (Hershey's Chocolate Can)

In each experiment I tried adjusting the height of the antenna, direction of the antenna (which doesn't seem to matter), material of nail/screw.  In nearly every case, I found that 46 feet above sea level was best for my location, however I could see this being very specific to my location.  You may have better luck with a different height where you are.

My entire experiment in this set is to find out what the best combination of a Coaxial Cable, each nail/screw, and the tin cans.  I have broken the entire experiment into 5 individual experiments.  In my results, I ignore the analog channels because all the analog channels I receive are available in digital, however, the average number of analog channels I can receive is 3, but the maximum is 5 (with a rusty nail connected to the copper part of a Coax cable.)

Experiment 1 - Jensen Model TV911 Digital Antenna
     This Amplified digital antenna has the rabbit ears look to it, and also had an FM loop attached to it.  I originally bought this antenna with my TV thinking that it would be best to get an amplified antenna.  Boy was I wrong!  I am lucky to get more than 3 channels with this antenna, and have concluded that it is the worst antenna used in this experiment.
 

Experiment 2 - 5 foot Coaxial Cable

     After my sheet disappointment with the antenna that I bought, I decided to just try plugging in a Coax cable to the back of my TV set, and use a safty pin to hold the end of the cable up as far as I could reach.  This resulted in more channels.  I was able to receive 10 digital channels.

Experiment 3 - Tin Can

     I received a tin can, that was used for some sort of food product.  I poked holes in the side of that can at every inch marker from the botton, then on the bottom I poked a hole in the center and mid-point between the center and edge.  I found that adjusting the placement of the screw did not affect the tin-can antenna's ability to receive channels, but a drastic improvement was found when I made sure that the copper and outer mesh of the coax did not touch.  I also found that the reception was better if the copper was connected to a nail/screw, and the outer mesh was pressed firmly on the side of the can.

However, the best performance I was able to achieve with the Tin can was using the Anti-rust Steel screw, and I was able to 10 digital channels.  This places the tin can at place number 3, even with a coax cable.

Experiment 4 - Hershey's Can
 After repeating the steps I took with the Tin can, the Hershey's Can prouced similar results, but had the ability to receive 12 digital channels. This means that the Hershey's can is placed at the number 2 spot.



Experiment 5 - Coaxial Cable with a Nail
 In case you didn't guess yet, we have a winner!  A 6 penny rust proof steel nail on the end of a coax cable is the best Antenna I have tested so far!  I was able to receive 21 digital channels using this method!  (but for some reason I still don't get Fox...)
 

Results Summary 
For those of you who skipped the rest to know what my resuts were, here is a recap:

#5 - A Jensen model TV911 amplified digital antenna (2 digital channels).
#3 - A coaxial cable pinned to the wall with a safety pin (10 digital channels).
#3 - A tin can antenna with a 6 penny rust resistant steel nail connected to the copper of a coax cable, and the outter mesh pressed against the outside of the can (10 digital channels).
#2 - A Hershey's can antenna with a 6 penny rust resistant steel nail connected to the copper of a coax cable, and the outter mesh pressed against the outside of the can (12 digital channels).
#1 - A six penny rust resistant steel nail connected to the copper core of a coax cable, and nothing connected to the outer mesh (21 digital channels).

My advice, just strip the end of a coax cable, and put a nail on it, then hold it up as high as you can.  I also noticed that a longer coax cable gets better reception, so maybe a really long coax cable is all you need.

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Next time for part two will either be a pringles can antenna or a fractal antenna.