In connection with the transition of domestic television broadcasting to digital, friends and even strangers began to turn to me with a request to install a digital set-top box.
You don’t need to buy and connect the set-top box to a TV, a lot of instructions come with it, where it is written in black and white and even in the pictures shows what and how to do it.
But with antennas it is not so simple. If in rural areas and outside the city for the reception of digital TV I definitely use only a good external antenna with an amplifier, then in the city the ability to install an external antenna is not always there. I wanted to buy a simple indoor antenna, but in the nearest stores there were no indoor antennas for digital TV at an affordable price. I did not want to wait until they sent from the alibaba ...
Therefore, I had to come up with a small indoor antenna, designed to receive digital TV signals.
Of course, I didn’t come up with anything fundamentally new, I just remember that once I saw something similar on the car of a trucker, he used a similar antenna to receive regular TV, but only during parking.
This antenna was based on a regular Pistolkors loop vibrator from a piece of copper wire, and the SWA antenna amplifier board, sold in almost all electronic stores.
I simply determine the vibrator size: we substitute the channel frequency of digital multiplexes (we have 505 MHz and 650 MHz) in the following formula: 300: f = x, where X is the length of the vibrator in meters and f is the frequency in megahertz. For our area, it turned out 0.59 m and 0.46 m. I chose a certain average value - about 50 cm.
SWA antenna amplifier boards are also different, the following numbers are best suited for our purpose: (in order of deterioration in gain quality) 9001, 9501, 6000, 3501, 2000, 9999. SWA boards with other numbers will not work, they are designed for different frequencies and have a weaker gain.
We select a piece of copper or aluminum (with aluminum the signal will be weaker) wires with a diameter of 2 ... 4 mm twice as long as calculated by the formula. The thicker the wire, the better. You can even use a copper pipe from the brake system. We bend this piece of wire as shown in the figure.
We mark the middle on it, and cut off too much, leaving small bends for contacts. If a tube is used, then flatten the ends of the tube with a hammer, and then drill holes for screws in them.
We clean the wire and bend the ends, forming from them loops for screws.We attach the vibrator to the amplifier board with M3 screws with nuts and washers. The length of the vibrator from edge to edge I got exactly 50 cm.
We connect the antenna wire of the required length to the amplifier. At the end of the antenna wire, install a plug based on the F - connector.
We connect the antenna to the set-top box and go to the menu. Select the ANTENNA POWER section and turn on the power of the amplifier. Then go to the MANUAL SEARCH section and select channel 43. We are trying to catch the signal, orienting the antenna perpendicular to the telecentre. The prefix does not display the signal level immediately, but with a delay of 2-3 seconds, so there is no need to rush.
After we caught the signal on a higher frequency multiplex, select 25 channel in the menu and achieve a good level on the low frequency multiplex.
After the best position of the antenna in the room is found, we fix it on the wall, for example, or on a bookshelf (in my apartment the antenna just lies behind the picture) and go to the AUTO SEARCH menu section. After an automatic search, the prefix remembers all the channels and is ready to work.
Happy viewing!