Landblog/Houseblog

TV antenna -- 14 January 2013 -- Back in October I bought an HDTV, and over the weekend I made this antenna and mounted it in the attic. My design is based on this video, The best DIY Antenna for HDTV, which I picked over many other designs because it looked easy and I already had all the parts... almost. I had coaxial cable, soldering equipment, and tinsnips to cut the pattern, but I didn't have a round biscuit tin, so I substituted a small cookie sheet that I got for a dollar from the dollar store. The video also says to make a little bracket for the cable, which I skipped.

The big challenge, not mentioned in the video, was soldering the outside wires from the cable onto the pan. Apparently they were coated with some kind of oil that prevented the solder from sticking. Yes, I was using leaded solder, and plenty of flux. I also tried cleaning the wires with a soapy paper towel, sanding them, burning the oil off with the soldering iron, and burning the oil off with a blowtorch, which also burned up the wires. I was about to try unbraiding two inches of wire and boiling it in a pot of super-soapy water, until Troy suggested a work-around: I used a wire nut to connect the cable wires to some copper speaker wire, which was then easy to solder to the pan. Then, rather than strip the foil off the insulation around the center wire, I put heat shrink wrap around it to get it up to where it connected to the top of the pan.

I don't know if a round biscuit pan would work better, but this thing works fine. I'm getting all the local digital broadcasts with clear pictures. After testing it in the window, I used a half inch bit to drill a hole at the edge of the ceiling, and happened to exactly hit a 2x6 in the attic, deeper than the bit was long. So I put on a head flashlight and dust mask and climbed up in the attic, and Troy and I tapped on both sides of the ceiling until I found the right board. I sawed the corner off to get to the hole, fed the cable down, drilled a little hole in the pan and nailed it to a roof beam.

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