Made my own TV Antenna so I can watch the Wings

I really wanted to watch the Detroit Red Wings hockey team playing in games 3 & 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals, but they were not on NBC.  I couldn’t get CBC Channel 9 out of Windsor, Canada on my regular TV antenna.  There’s no way I’m gonna pay to watch the Versus Network.  So what’s a highly irritated Detroit hockey fan supposed to do?

I decided to design and build my own homemade high-gain TV antenna.  Being a Ham Radio operator (FCC license KA8PVT), I already know a lot about antennas.  After researching on the internet, I found a version of the Bobtail Curtain Array designed for the 2 meter ham band.  It’s highly directional, rated for 10dB gain, & appeared easy to construct out of inexpensive materials.

It’s a set of 3 vertical driven elements 1/4 wavelength in height and 1/2 wavelength apart, with another set of 3 vertical reflectors spaced 0.15 wavelength from the driven elements.  I constructed the antenna using 1/4” copper tubing connected by 12AWG wire, on a light weight framework of plastic PVC pipe.  The original design was for 144MHz so I had to recalculate all the dimensions for 189Mhz, the center frequency for TV Channel 9.

There was one problem with impedance matching; the Bobtail Curtain has a 50 ohm impedance and my TV requires a 75 ohm impedance.  I solved this by constructing a 1/12 wavelength matching transformer out of coaxial cable.

Combined with a 10dB amplifier, the Bobtail Curtain Array performed surprisingly well.  While  Channel 9 wasn’t crystal clear, it was more than acceptable for watching the hockey game.  I was even able to pull in CBS Channel 11 and ABC Channel 13, both out of Toledo, Ohio.

Not bad at all for $30 in materials and a few hours of labor.

Labels: Sports, Thoughts