living in O'Connor, Canberra I should get good reception from Black Mtn tower but I haven't been able to suss it for a couple of years. Reception was very patchy and for my favourite station SBS was terrible. I just couldn't get my rabbit ears to work well so I made my own antenna. I used that strip tv antenna cable that costs about a dollar per metre from Bunnings and soldered it to a coaxial end.
In detail I cut a 1.8m piece of tv antenna cable and joined the paired wires on the cable together at the ends (so I end up still a 1.8m strip but it has little u turns at the ends). Then I broke one side of the strip and twisted in a bit of copper to then solder the two ends to the coax connector (one end to the centre prong and the other to the outer ring).
Worked ok but was still having some reception problems. Luckily I stumbled upon an article that suggested you make sure there are no sharp curves in your coax cable. When I smoothed that I had flawless reception!
So the deal is you can probably make your own antenna for maybe $10 including a length of coax.
If you have rabbit ears already smooth out the run of coax, no small radius curves. Worked for me.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)