• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Is this possible...? DXTV antenna question

J

jras20

Would this be possible. Someone was telling me they can strip a coax cable down to the wire, on a metal roof, twist on the coaxial wire onto the screw and you get reception. Is this possible?
 
The answer is.... it depends. Anyhting metal can be used for reception. The question is ... how well.

Antenna requires a piece of metal attached to the central conductor and the outside shield to ground. Typicllay the radio will give you a decent ground. So if you connect the center conductor to the roof you will get redception.

The bad news is that if the metal roof has a ground connection (say metal walls of the house or downspouts) you may not get anything. If there is a power line nearby you may get excellent reception of 60 Hz.

And probably, if any, better reception on lower frequencies rather than FM or VHF (assuming you get anything)

Assuming you don't have metal downspouts touching the ground, you might have better luck loading up the metal rain gutters.

Better though is a plain wire dipole cut to the frequency of interest or for M, as long a wire as you can get.
 
If its a strong signal, and a VHF one then it could work, although it was a lot easier in the analog days. You'd still be better off creating an antenna that is built for the correct wavelength. This is sort of similar to how you can improve reception on cheap FM radios by touching the antenna. Your body acts as a sort of conductor and ground for the antenna. Cheap radios often have antennas too short and bad grounding. When I touch the properly sized and grounded antenna on one of my radios, it will actually make reception worse.

Growing up near a strong VHF station, I can remember how easy it was to get reception. At school I can remember simply pulling the coax cable out of the VCR and touching the inner wire with your finger or something made from metal was all you had to do to get decent reception
 
You would be better off if you stripped all the shield and insulation off a length (1/4 wavelength at the frequency you want) of the center conductor, and then took the shield and connected it to the roof. For TV, you'd probably get the best results if you ran the center conductor horizontally or symmetrically oriented to the roof pitch in a V shape, oriented away from and not electrically touching the roof. I've heard of people doing something like that. It's worth a try experimentally. If the wire wouldn't stand away from the roof on its own, you might find a way to suspend it with a wooden dowel. Sounds like a lot of work. You might as well put up an antenna.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom