[ale] HDTV antenna for urban areas

[Daniel Howard]

As a small token of my appreciation to the list, and since some folks
have posted recently about setting up off air HDTV reception with the
transition date looming, I thought you guys would enjoy some solutions
I've run across for dealing with the extensive multipath you get in
dense urban areas for HDTV reception.  Enjoy, Daniel

1.  My solution: I have two RadioShack large aperture/gain antennas in
my attic, each with a low noise amp at the antenna output, and I have an
A/B switch in my TV room such that when I see multipath interfering with
reception on one antenna, I switch to the other.  The antennas have to
be at least 10 lambda apart however since their gain is so high, and at
VHF frequencies for Channel 11 (around 200 MHz), this is about 48 ft.,
Using a spectrum analyzer revealed the multipath was spatially
decorrelated between the two antennas in my attic even though they were
only 40 ft. apart.

I had to use this solution because I'm in a valley topographically with
buildings and land blocking my direct line of sight to the antenna
towers.

2.  If you have line of sight to the towers (use www.antennaweb.org),
but have lots of big buildings around you, you just need a really
directional antenna, here's what my friend at GaTech used.  Make sure to
click page two at the bottom of the web site for the second, more robust
and easier to manufacture solution that he came up with, brilliant IMHO.

http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~wn17/