XWrench3
Daemon Poster
- Messages
- 820
- Location
- W. MICHIGAN
40+ years ago, i was part of my high school audio-visual team. back then, the coordinator was a great guy, always challenging us to learn more. i had a lot of interest in building a long range radio antenna, for listening to music. anyway, i was not as successful as i wanted to be, because my dad would not let me mount a huge array on the roof of the house. so i compromised, and made a decent antenna from the clothes line we had in the back yard. anyway, now days, my family live out in the bush so to speak nearly 50 miles from the closest tv station. when we moved here, there was a tv antenna mounted to the roof, but it had seen better days (branches had dropped onto it) and it did not do a very good job of pulling in any stations. so i just said hooey on it, and ordered cable. well, at least in this area, the price of cable has since tripled. and honestly, i could buy one heck of an antenna for one months bill. but there are SO MANY trees between here and there, i am not sure (especially in the summer with 40 billion leaves in the way) how well a normal tv antenna will work. one of the things i had thought about back in the day, was using a dish antenna. but dad said no to that as well, since they were 5 feet across. this morning, i had an idea, but i do not know enough about these to know if it would work or not. what about one of the smaller "dish tv" antennas? would something like that work for receiving hdtv? i do not know how much different satellite wave lengths and hdtv waves are. and i do not know if that small dish reflector would be big enough to catch a full wave this far out. i would have to have a 40'+ tower to get a clean shot at a regular antenna. but i can now at least mount anything i want on top of the roof. which would give me about 25 feet in elevation at the peak. also, the peak of the second story has no tree limbs near it, so i would not have to worry about damage other than wind damage or lightning strikes. any idea if this will work? or what modifications i would have to make?