2 is not a bunch. It’s merely a slight gathering and the little one loved to leap off the boom onto my head while I was sleeping… you gotta love that, right?
The 4 bay bow tie is for UHF, of course, and could be leaned up behind an entertainment cabinet, or cleverly disguised behind a ‘Tapestry’ or some wommany thing.
The RCA would require more clever concealment, but would add all those VHF-High channels the bow tie might miss - but at under 10 miles that sound you hear in your head is The Jerry Springer Show.
As well has been said, it all depends on your location and the locations of the stations you wish to receive.
In an urban center area, with many stations in all directions, you will want something reputable that is tuned more for ‘omni-directional’ as you can find.
For suburban sprawl areas, where the majority of stations are in a similar direction, like me, something like my antenna works pretty good.
I have this antenna, its in my attic and hangs from the rafters with nails and strings.
It works well for my location, although I do also have some unwatched ‘from behind’ channels which are not so great.
If you are way out in the boon docks, you might want something with even more range like the parabolics mentioned already.
And yes, outdoor doesn’t have to go outdoors, if you have room in the attic or garage or wherever.
Obviously though, the higher you can place, and least obstructions will improve reception.
edit:
oh, one other thing.
do not scrimp on cables.
use quality cable, with quality connectors.
cheap cables/connectors can ruin reception on marginal signals and make quality signals crappy.
@ClassicMovieLover personally I wouldn’t bother with that one. Anything amplified, from what I’ve found from experience, is just going to be a pain. @JuiceWSA is just way too awesome lol. The GE one linked doesn’t seem too bad either. Heck, order them all from amazon and return the ones you can’t get working!
Just saw this thread and great stuff! Agree that it is so situational. I used to live a bit out from things where I had a nice long range Channel Master way up in the air above the house to get channels, and still had to supplement it with a home built half dipole antenna I built specifically designed to pick up one station I wanted that was annoyingly on VHF-Hi and about 50 miles away.
Now I live closer to the transmitters, but they are all around me. A home built DB4 in my attic I made from wood and 12 gauge copper wire from romex, with no reflector, is now my best solution and outperforms my channel master because it isn’t directional. (And yes, I was more motivated to build an antenna than to take the reflector off.)
Wise. It probably worked better than one you ‘modified’. Antennae are funny sometimes - they require the last piece to help the first piece work and when you start stripping pieces off - ur messin’ up.
You can build a dipole with a hunk of coax and two pieces of wire.
468 divided by the frequency in Mhz gives you the length in feet of a half-wave dipole. Cut to length, cut in half, attach one half to the center conductor and the other half to the ground and there you go. Antenna.
You could even use a coat hanger if it makes you feel better as long as it’s the right length.
No doubt. People should really look at rolling their own. It’s pretty fun. If you are close enough to the transmitters then screw in an old coax cable to the back of your TV, strip off 6 inches of insulation, and boom, you’ve got an antenna. The half dipole I built had to take wind, rain, and ice 30 feet off the ground, so it was a little bit heavier duty.
