A couple of years back… well more than a couple… I built a Gray Hoverman antenna to pick up over-the-air terrestrial broadcast TV. I wanted to cut the cable-tv cord. It worked, but wasn’t optimal, I got 4 RF channels accounting for 13 digital channels. The antenna was constructed from plans found on the Internet. I enhanced it by mounting it to a piece of plywood, using a 2×4 as a spacer for the antenna and aluminum foil to act as a reflector. The digital channels received included ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS… TV like in the 70s when I was a kid. NICE! I was hooked but wanted more.
I about a year later, built a 2 bay Gray Hoverman antenna out of PVC pipe, 10 gauge copper wire and pieces of 3/8 inch mesh screen as a reflector. This antenna was supposed to give more gain and better signals because I mounted it at 15ft outside. Performance was horrid and I abandoned this build effort
I bought a commercially built antenna. It picked up a few more stations and I ran with this antenna for about 4 years. It got about 35 or 36 digital channels and was generally happy. But wanted to see if i could get some of the channels that we received intermittently. I wanted more gain so I picked up a higher gain antenna and stored the old antenna as a back-up.
The new antenna came in about 3 years ago. With it I bought a Wineguard preamplifier. This got 58 digital channels with their “newer” channel being intermittently received. The preamplifier has since failed, likely due to moisture/rain, but also possibly fried because of the near-field radiation on two meter transmissions from my ham shack. My ham station overloads the front-end of all TVs in the house when I transmit on 2 meters, 1.25 meters and 70 centimeters. I don’t want to blow-out my TVs!
To boost the signal out of the antenna, I ordered a ChannelMaster Preamp-1. This preamp has a built in filter that passes 54MHz~88MHz, 174MHz-260MHz 470MHz~608MHz. This preamp is waterproof and made of die-cast aluminum and is built like a tank and powered by a power supply over the coax.
To cut my near-field signals from my ham station, I bought additional filters, a 50MHz High pass filter to cut HF frequencies out, an FM filter to knock the multi 100KW and 50KW FM broadcast stations that are less than a mile from my house, an OOB filter to try to knock my VHF/UHF transmissions down, and I already have an LTE filter to knock cell signals down. My intent is to put all of the filters between the antenna and the input to the preamp. In theory, the preamplifier will then only be boosting TV signals Fingers crossed.
I’ll shoot some pictures when I work this project when all of the gear gets here and post an “build” post.