What's the best way to make an indoor DTV antenna?

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Jet102fm
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04 Apr 2011, 5:09 pm

^
See the title above.

Me and my dad are going to get started on a project of building our own Digital TV antenna. We need less material as possible. There is a new station in town that just hit the airwaves and I want to be able to see it. There are many online tutorials, but what do you recommend?



auntblabby
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04 Apr 2011, 10:06 pm

you could try The ARRL [American Radio Relay League] Antenna Book- it is full of antenna theory and construction info. but remember, if you are further than 10 miles from the nearest transmitter tower, indoor antennas [room level] will shave approx. 3/4 of your available signal strength which will result in insufficient signal strength, so because the digital broadcast system has a high-threshold[relative to analog] signal strength cut-off, any reception level below this cut-off means there isn't just a weak picture but no picture at all. chances are, your indoor antenna will have to make up for the low indoor signal strength by having to have multiple tuned elements in a beam array, which will take up space. or you could try multiple "fly swatter" UHF dtv antennas in an array, also a bulky arrangement. you can tell for sure, if you get yourself one of those portable pocket dtv units with the whip antenna- if it gets dtv channels robustly [no stuttering or dropped frames/drop-outs] inside your house, then you are in luck with just a simple set-top antenna.
good luck 8)
happy viewing :)