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Channel Master 1990 Catalog

It's a little sad that many of these antennas have succumbed to disuse, re-roofing, ice storms, etc. Hard to preserve them because they take up a lot of room. Pictures and catalogs seem the best bet, at least for me.
 
It's too bad that most manufacturers have discontinued so many of these great
products. It's hard to find a decent all channel (2-51) antenna these days. Most
antennas are either UHF only or channels 7-69.
 
Some message boards have expressed hope that some of these products, like the Quantum 1160, could be replicated. Probably it would be very expensive to do so though.
 
I remember their "Miami Special"s were everywhere. Miami's channel six was south, but all the other stations were north.
I used the channel six yagi part of one to receive a reserved band college FM station which was only 35w ERP at the time.
Their student DJ's would tell me that I was lying or that I "am not supposed to listen that far".

I cannot believe they still carried the models 3428 and 3450 VHF conicals in 1990; they were antiques even then.

I wonder how much a seven-foot, model 4251 Para-scope UHF parabolic dish would cost today.
A new one would out-perform an original, because it would be made to cover thirty-two fewer channels, almost 200 fewer MHz.
 
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I was surprised at how well conicals actually performed. It's kind of like a Low VHF version of a UHF Bow tie with similar numbers of elements. A Two Bay Conical is like a 2 Bay UHF Bowtie with Reflector, similar with 4 Bays. They even perform quite well on VHF High, especially with the elements bent forward like a V-Log and a director at the front.
 
The Finco Bedspring was another one that was supposed to be great. I think I may have seen one in operation in Upstate, NY around 1960. I couldn't see it because of the trees, but people said they had the best TV reception in town. It was on an Alliance rotator. The control box capacitor needed replacing, so the needle bounced around. It received 3 and 5 from Syracuse, which was about 90 miles away. I have seen a few in Michigan, but they have since deteriorated.

http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/186...00-finclone-vhf-fm-antenna-huge-powerful.html
 
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Schroedingers Cat said:
That VHF Winegard was a good performer also.
Click to expand...

I have a soft spot for the Winegard antennas of the 50s and 60s, given I grew up only 90 miles NW of Burlington IA. So they were quite popular in the area. The Winegard in the picture was the same as on our house until 1974, when a new roof claimed it. My grandma's house had the fringe model, but then she had a color TV and they needed the extra gain. I wished I hadn't reduced my original pictures from 2007. they're really too pixelated and these antennas are gone.
 
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