Walter Talks UHF Reception

Walter gets excited about things with wires and dials and whatnot. He asked me to post this about some antenna he's building. This post has otherwise nothing to do with Wedges, except that Walter is behind it. Anyway, here goes.

Back in the 1950s, a guy named Hoverman designed an antenna. There's one pictured to the left. People used to use antennas to receive television signals before we all decided it was a good idea to pay large corporations with poor customer service to deliver more, but not necessarily better, television to us for a monthly fee.

At any rate, Hoverman's design wasn't bad, but antennas just weren't that popular anymore, and most people eventually took them down and fed them to squirrels or what have you.

Then, a few years ago, the US government decided that it would be a cool idea if everyone bought a new television even if they didn't really want or need one. They did this by mandating that all television signals be delivered digitally by the year something or other. The television networks have gone along with it, and now a whole bunch of crystal clear digital television channels are floating around in space in front of you. Some of these channels are even in high definition.

Here's the part that Walter's really excited about. The same antennas from the 50s can be used to pick up these digital channels. And some guys on the internet took Hoverman's old design and ran it through some magic computer programs and improved it a whole bunch. Then they released the plans under a GPL3 license, which is a very geeky way of saying you can use it without paying them anything. You can make your own out of wire and a 2x4! Here's the plans!




It just so happens that Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is well suited for picking up television signals from both Canadian stations broadcasting from the CN Tower, and American stations broadcasting from across Lake Ontario in Rochester, New York. It's all "very ham radio".

Here is a link to the page about this antenna: http://www.digitalhome.ca/ota/superantenna/index.htm. Walter is going to build one and post it here when he's done!