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How can I make a good tv antenna or upgrade mine for best results?

I want to be getting good tv reception and ontop be getting other waves. We live next to the city and there are hundreds of satellites. Some people are able to capture some of this using their tv antennas thus they see extra channels free. How is it done? Also, which is the best wire to use for my tv antenna? How does it look?

Public Comments

1. 1. Always orient it correctly When the antenna looks like this: <<<< The TV station should be in this direction >>>> The TV station should not be in this direction 2. Always place it high enough - 30 feet or 10 meters above the ground at the installation location unless you are installing on a hill or mountainside location with a clear line of sight towards the tv transmitter sites (no other hillls, mountains, buildings or trees in the way) 3. Replace antenna and connecting cable every ten years or when damaged by salt air, wind storms, hurricanes or tornados. Replace lightning arrestor when cable is replaced. 4. Use coax cable that is matched to your antenna and TV. In the United States this is 75 ohm RG-59 or RG-6 cable made for VHF/UHF TV use. Other countries may use 50 ohm cable (or so I have read). We used to use 300 ohm twinlead but that is less reliable in the wind and causes you to have to use standoffs to keep it away from metal objects. 75 ohm cable with a matching transformer for the end that connects to the antenna and to the TV (if needed) is much better. It is shielded from noise sources and does not need standoffs (it can be cable tied to the pole). Picking up satellites with a regular TV antenna is impossible unless some of your local TV stations are rebroadcasting satellite channels on their second, third or fourth program on their digital channel. That is called multicasting. Usually this is just Spanish programming, music channels, additional PBS channels and Childrens programming now that the company that was doing this for CNN and HBO went out of business. VHF and UHF channel frequencies are in MHz. Satellite frequencies are in GHZ which are 1000 tims greater than MHz. So you cannot use the same antenna or receivers for both.