Judging from the number of emails I have received on the subject, there seems to be quite a lot of interest in building your own UHF antenna for HDTV reception. I’ve discussed this topic a few times in the past, but here are some resources for prospective antenna builders.
Simple Antennas
These two UHF antenna projects are [...]
Regular readers of these pages may remember my earlier attempt to build a UHF antenna for HDTV reception. It worked surprisingly well, especially considering that it was a crude prototype. My subsequent attempts at antenna building were less successful, for a variety of reasons I may go into later.
I think that the copper wire I [...]
While I was waiting on a street in front of several houses today, I was struck by the large number of antennas on one house. It was a fairly small house, but it was covered in dishes and antennas; I counted 11 in all.
Mounted on one side of the house:
1 DISH Network DISH 500 satellite [...]
Photo courtesy of Joe Roberts (used with permission)
The Channel Master 4251 is generally regarded as the most powerful consumer UHF television antenna ever produced. The 4251 has acquired somewhat of a legendary status because production stopped sometime around the year 2000, and no comparable consumer antenna is sold today. It was a 7-foot parabolic dish, [...]
The Washington Post recently published an article asking an important question about the digital TV transition in the United States. Will people who depend on over-the-air television be able to receive the same stations that they could before? The answer is: possibly not.
After the transition to digital television on February 17, 2009, television stations in the United States will move to their final channel allocations. A majority of stations will be on UHF (channels 14 to 51), rather than VHF (channels 2 to 13). Many people will need a UHF antenna if they want to continue receiving [...]