What is required to be connected to the terminals of an antenna?

So I was taking a look at my attic antenna, trying to understand what is connected and what isn't. It has what seems to be a metal center rod (painted blue) with metal rods mounted on it perpendicularly. Some of these "reception rods" (what should I call them?) are not otherwise connected to anything, and some reception rods have other thick straight metal wires running on them to connect them to other reception rods. One of these wires has a wing nut, one on each side. To this my 300-75 ohm transformer twin leads are connected, to which a coax cable is connected.

So I gather that each receiving rod is better at picking up certain wavelengths than others, and you put them all together to have a better chance of the antenna being good enough.

My question is: how does the circuit work? It seems like one big piece of different metals, so why are there two leads that I need to connect? On the antenna, what needs to be connected to what? Why aren't there wires connecting all the receiving rods? What connections should I check to ensure the antenna is hooked up right and not damaged? I have a electronics and circuits background, so connecting two terminals that are shorted together anyway doesn't make sense to me.

Thanks in advance.

Reception 101

The long rods are called Elements, they are used to receive VHF signals and also FM radio signals - since the FM frequency is in the range of the VHF.

Yes they are physically connected - wired as you put it, to each other in a criss cross pattern with something called phasing lines. The antenna tunes its self to what ever frequency by looking up and down the "array" - that is all the elements connected together and tunes its self to try to properly receive the signal by making it's length match the wavelength of the frequency of the signal you are trying to receive.

The driven element - also known as the Di Pole is where the lugs are that you connect the Balun - transformer. On the VHF side of the antenna - it is physically connected to the phasing lines.

On the UHF - small side of the antenna, the little thingy s connected to the main part of the antenna - "boom" is called directors.
They are not mechanically connected to one another. Each director receives the signal and reflects it back to the director behind it, which in turn reflects it back to the di - pole and receives the signal. More or less.

The thing that matters the most with the directors is that they are the proper length and spaced a proper distance away from each other and the Di Pole.

The V behind the directors - is called a reflector or a corner reflector to be more exact. It gathers a part of the UHF signal that the directors could not reflect back into the Di Pole and increases gain.

Gain - refers to the antenna's ability to receive signals at a specific frequency which is why it is advisable to have a antenna with a higher gain rating. Usually, the bigger the antenna, and the more elements and directors it has, the more gain it has.

http://www.indiana.edu/~radiotv/wtiu/uhf.shtml
A deep fringe VHF antenna has to be big, and therefore heavy, difficult to install and expensive. In UHF band, you can get away with a much smaller antenna. One thing to remember is that the VHF band is split into two bands. The lower (channels 2-6) and higher (channels 7-13) portions. These are two well separated frequency ranges.

If your antenna is more than 10 years old, now is the time to replace it with a newer - high gain antenna. The reason for this is because the digital signals are broadcast with a lower amount of receive power then the analog signals - due to the fact that most signals have been moved up into the UHF spectrum and your old VHF antenna probably will not receive them very well. Analog antenna's were built with VHF in mind and UHF as a afterthought. Even some big VHF antenna's only have about 40 miles of good UHF reception capabilities. Which means that by the signal travels down the coax wire, it has lost 50 to 75% of the signal it had at the antenna just in the wire, which forces you to use some type of pre amp to compensate for the loss in the wire.

Thanks, this is very helpful. I will take a look at my antenna soon to see how it stacks up. The bottom line is that I should see how many and what size the UHF directors are, right? On a traditional single boom antenna, there should be many of these? If just a few, I shouldn't expect much out of this antenna? Are there any modifications I could do to the antenna to make UHF any better? Maybe my Silver Sensor is better than this antenna altogether?

Thanks, this is very helpful. I will take a look at my antenna soon to see how it stacks up. The bottom line is that I should see how many and what size the UHF directors are, right? On a traditional single boom antenna, there should be many of these? If just a few, I shouldn't expect much out of this antenna? Are there any modifications I could do to the antenna to make UHF any better? Maybe my Silver Sensor is better than this antenna altogether?


Without knowing which model of antenna you presently own, there is no way for me to tell you what you wish to know.

All I can tell you is that without knowing where you live and what your reception situation is - I cannot tell you what type or how big of a antenna you need.

All I can do is guess that you have a problem with your reception and would like to improve it without spending any money.

Unfortunately, the world runs on money and the less of it we spend the less we make. It is a trickle down theory of mine where if you made a product that would last several lifetimes, once you saturated the market with your product, there would be no more demand for your product and you would go out of business.

So manufacturers makes their product to perform well for a specific amount of years, in hopes that you will be satisfied with their product today and will return 10 years from now to buy another.

My dad swore by a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air with a 265 Power Pack engine and 2 speed Power Glide transmission. Most people under the age of 30 does not even know what a '55 Chevrolet looks like or what a Power Pack engine is or even how to figure out how to convert cubic inches to liters. So trying to explain to those people that the engine was 265 cubic inches and had a 8 to 1 compression ratio would be like me trying to explain to you how a antenna works and what you could do at home to make it better - when I never saw your antenna before and don't even know the model number.

A Silversensor antenna is a piece of junk. They are designed for a urban setting where you are only a couple of miles away from the transmitter and do not want a big ugly antenna on your roof, or where you own a mobile home and you go camping and would like some type of reception when you get to a primitive campground where there is no tv cable available. Again, you wouldn't want to lug around a big heavy antenna when you go camping.

For home use, you need what ever antenna that is designed to be used in the distance you live away from the transmitters, with a cushion of a couple of extra miles, so that when the performance of the antenna deteriorates somewhere down the road, you do not have to go out 6 months or a year from now and buy another new antenna.

With analog, you had snow and noise - but could still watch the picture. With digital, it is all or nothing. Either you have a perfect picture or you have pixelation and or no picture at all.

Several weeks ago, two television stations in Erie PA shut down their transmitters for a weekend and experimented with different locations to try and solve the problem of no reception on the North Shore of Lake Erie.

The only viable solution would be to put up a small translator in the middle of Lake Erie and tilt the antenna towards the North Shore of Erie. Fat chance that is going to happen though.

UHF is line of sight, it does not travel through cement buildings, re enforced with steel rebar. It does not go up one hill and down the next and it does not go around corners. It does not go through trees with leaves - well and it does not go down into deep valley's.

You have to point your antenna in the direction of the transmitter to receive the signal properly and if your point of aim is off by even as much as 10* - in a fringe area, you get little or no reception.

If you added directors to the UHF side of the antenna, you would have to re enforce the boom to handle the extra wind sheer and you would have to make the corner reflector bigger. Even then, UHF frequency's ends at about channel 51 - 692 - 698 Mhz. So building a antenna that is capable of receiving channel 83 would not do you much good if your local television station is transmitting on real channel 25.

You have to find a happy medium where the antenna receives well on all channels you wish to receive.

The one thing you can work on is replacing your old wire with a newer wire, maybe even a Quad Shield RG 6 and good terminals and some sort of pre amp to compensate for the loss in the wire.

Trying to re engineer the antenna will only waste your time and money and probably will not do anything to solve your reception problems.

To PSzalapski,

JBantennaman has given you an excellent set of generalities, and I will give you my set of generalities that can hopefully lead to some later specifics.

Because your best choice of an antenna is really dictated by your location, location, and location. And yes, it can be SOMETIMES but not always be a cost benefit money trade off. The more you spend
in terms of a bigger antenna(s), a rotar, and a higher tower, the further out you can often reach. At what point which you stop spending more and and more money to get fewer and fewer extra channels is up to you.

So start out with an exact address TVFool report. With your 63 posts, you can post one with no problems.

Then many on this forum can make various recommendation, backed up with science and experience, in terms of predicting
what channels various antenna choices can get you.

And knowing what antennas you have now would also be helpful. And it is very possible that some of the more modern but inexpensive antennas might run rings around what you have now. And its also possible that you may be at a location where
the antennas you now have will get you what you need at a cost of no money if you know how to aim it right.

Thanks. This post was just a general learning and concepts question, and it helps a lot.

For my house in particular, mind looking at this thread? Thanks.

http://www.highdefforum.com/local-hdtv-info-reception/102166-my-minneapolis-st-paul-antenna-situation-advice-welcome.html#post947455

Read through www.HDTVPrimer.com.

It has a lot of very good well illustrated info on antennas.