HD Amplified Flat Panel (TV) Antenna

shirsch101

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jan 29, 2012
Messages
256
Location
West Chester, PA
Recently I have tried with much success a few HD TV Amplified Flat Panel Antennas with a variety of scanners and SDR's. The RSSI signal is much higher along with the clarity of the voices is much clearer. I am comparing this to an outdoor Discone Antenna, mounted 20 feet above ground and a few indoor antennas.
The questions I am asking am I damaging the scanner which should be 50 ohms and the HD TV antenna which is 75 ohms?

Thanks

Steve
 

Ubbe

Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2006
Messages
8,363
Location
Stockholm, Sweden
A normal size discone have a lot of attenuation at the horizon of 700MHz-900MHz signals, 10dB-20dB.
A flatpanel antenna have directivity and more gain in that direction compared to a omni discone.
I guess that the antenna are just one or two bowtie type antenna elements that have a wide frequency range.
If you have a 536 you can push the rotary controller and volume to display the bit error rate of digital signals to compare and adjust for lowest possible value.

/Ubbe
 

dave3825

rebmeM evitcA
Joined
Feb 17, 2003
Messages
5,944
Location
Suffolk County NY
I guess that the antenna are just one or two bowtie type antenna elements that have a wide frequency range.

Think most of them are like that. Here is a Mohu Leaf being torn down.

 

G7RUX

Member
Joined
Jul 14, 2021
Messages
261
Having read some of the information around these antennas and having done a few calculations, I have ordered a cheap variant to have a go with for VHF/UHF scanning. The idea doesn't look mad so will report back when I have had a bit of time to evaluate!
 

bigcam406

Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2008
Messages
1,178
Location
oshawa,ont,canada
I have been using an unamplified Antennas Direct Clearstream 2 with my GRE PSR600 for a few years now and i noticed a slight improvement in reception for distant signals in my area. Great antenna for dxing during summer months.
 

ewh01

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jul 9, 2006
Messages
40
Location
vineland, nj
The county next to me (where I "grew up" in the FD) is on 700. I was get mediocre signal using the rabbit ears that came with the dongle. I was going to build a Yagi, then had the thought that they are using old TV frequencies, so why not try a TV antenna. I put one of these in my garage attic, pointed it at the nearest transmitter and fine tuned it using the graphs in OP25, works great!!
 

krokus

Member
Premium Subscriber
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
5,777
Location
Southeastern Michigan
Generally, its best to use an antenna tuned for the freqs your monitoring. But sometimes, like this, people see good results. Just curious, you did not state what freqs you did this on.
The 800 MHz freqs are former TV UHF, so most TV antennas will work well.
 

merlin

Active Member
Joined
Jul 3, 2003
Messages
1,859
Location
South East Idaho
I used one of those before I got my discone up and they seem to work great, even indoors before putting it just above the eaves.
They seem to be bi-directional like a dipole. One I used did well down to the FM BC band and then, had to use a trap. Below that seemed to fall off and not much use at 55 Mhz and below.
The preamp went PFFFT in an electrical storm, so here it sits.
 
Top