Why does my antenna work when i touch it

If you are really bold, or crave WERU reception on a budget, you can make a custom di-pole. You can drape custom di-pole over the roof of your house, or climb the tree in your front yard and tie it to the appropriate branches of course, experimenting tirelessly to find the proper orientation of the di-pole for best reception.

Twin lead is so cheap that you may find yourself quite proud of the dramatic improvement in reception for a bit of time, but very little money. Cut an appropriate length of twin for the top bar. In the middle of that length cut one of the two conductors and strip back the plastic coating. Now connect another length of the twin lead to the two bare conductors of the top bar.

The other end is connected to your radio antenna terminals. If a custom di-pole sounds like too much trouble, you can make a cut-and-split di-pole. Take some twin lead and split it down the middle. Attach the other end to the radio.

Very simple, though not as effective as the custom di-pole. No Antenna Available? Make a Wire Antenna Homemade antennas can work very well. Often a piece of wire becomes an antenna without much fuss at all. It can be thick or thin wire, and free or cheap is the best wire around.

Wire with a plastic coating is safer remember to strip any coating away to allow connection of the wire to the antenna terminals , but bare wire is fine. Use any piece of wire. Attach it to an antenna terminal. Run it over drapery rods and window casings. Throw it out the window and into the nearby tree. Toss it onto the roof. Do the same with two wires. Spend some time experimenting with the placement of these wires; often opposite directions work well. The idea is to get a thick loop of wire near the radio.

Almost any large metal structure above ground can act as antenna. Aluminum rain gutters, air conditioning and heat ducts, metal window frames, aluminum siding and metal roofing are great antennas.

That length of wire might get thrown in the tree next to your garden as your are gardening and listening to the radio, or more permanently attached to the rain gutter outside your bedroom window, or tossed on the roof.

In very fringe areas this antenna would provide significant improvement in reception. Another useful application of this antenna would be if you are experiencing interference from another station while trying to tune WERU.

Here are the Antenna Plans PDF format , and important notes about building such an antenna appear below. Special thanks to Jack Dice and Mark Roman for the plans and notes. I live in Hollywood, the heart of the metro Los Angeles area, which is saturated with broadcast TV signals from relatively nearby transmitters. But because I live in an apartment on the 4th floor overlooking the inner courtyard of a 5-story building, there seem to be countless complexities and reflections in the digital signal environment, resulting in marginal reception for many stations.

This means an unstable and unpredictable signal on any given day at any given hour. So, frozen images, weird image mashups from different points in time, digital mosaics, artifacts and intermittent dropouts to black are common, routine even, in my TV viewing.

There is no turning back now. The invasion of the flat antennas has begun. TV Network, Escape TV, Grit TV, and their digital multicast substation brethren which are even now subverting the cable conglomerates that refuse to acknowledge most of them. The revolution is nigh! Occasionally they would come very spotty and then disappear. I live in Northern Virginia in an apartment and am 18 miles as the crow flies from the TV transmitters and have a 50 mile amplified Mohu Leaf antenna. How I Solved the problem ——————————.

Then I took an old 3 pin audio-video cable one with the Red, Yellow and White pins on either ends which we used to connect to a VCR in the good old days!

Actually Mohu Leaf antenna already has two pinholes to hang it on a wall, I pushed the Red pins into those. Even the other channels that I was already receiving are significantly more stable now. Well the reason this hack worked is because of the copper wire in the AV cables which pulled in weak TV signals closer to the antenna. Good great results by covering the backside away from broadcast antenna with sheet metal.

Just enough to cover the antenna. I am happy it worked for you and others. If you incline it slightly the reception is far better. For some reason when i put my indoor digital antenna near a window it gets horrible reception.

Ive funny enough found the best spot is hanging from my front door handle of my metal door. Why is tgat? I have 3 indoor antennas 1 being an older mohu which picks up very little here n Pembroke Va but worked awesome when we traveled n the big truck but I was up till recently using a square hard plastic amplified antenna that during Sumner stuck it out the window hanging down off top of ac and it picked up all the channels we knew we could get all at once but then had to take ac out and had to move on one side of window to get my 6s 6.

Oh I also want to, add that I also amplified the new antenna by running the cord to the amplifier that went to my last box antenna but please any help or suggestions would b great and guess I also need to add we have a metal roof here. Remove obstacles. Remove obstacles, if possible. Make sure your antenna has a clear shot in the direction of the TV station transmitter.

Check and replace antenna connections. Make sure the antenna and TV connections are secure. Check for brittleness and fraying. If you have an outdoor antenna, cables can get worn when exposed to the elements. Indoor antennas can be chewed by pets. Make sure the antenna connection terminals aren't rusted, and check the entire length of the cable, if possible, for breaks or cuts. You may not be able to check the portion of the cable that runs through a wall. RG6 does a better job with digital TV signals, as it supports wider bandwidth, long-distance runs, and holds up better outdoors.

Costs of cables vary depending on brand and length. Prices start at a few dollars for a three-foot or six-foot length. Run a channel scan. After checking the antenna placement and connections, go into the TV or DTV converter box setup menu, then run a new channel scan. New channels may be added that weren't available previously. If a station registers, you should be able to watch it.

Use a rotor. If you have an outdoor antenna and receive TV signals from several directions , adding a rotor to the antenna might help. If you know the station transmitter locations, use a rotor to direct the antenna to the new channels and manually add those channels to your TV channel listings.

Note the rotor position for the new channels. If you move the antenna using the rotor and rescan the channels, the TV may no longer list the previously scanned channels if the antenna doesn't receive those channels in the new position.

Move the antenna. If you have an indoor antenna, placing it near or on a window avoids the materials used in wall construction that interfere with the signal. Also, place it as high as possible. If the length of the cable that goes from the antenna to the TV is too long, the signal may be weakened. To assist, you may need a signal amplifier. Use a signal amplifier. If you have trouble receiving TV signals, place a signal amplifier also called a signal booster between the antenna and TV to boost the signal.

Connect the cable from the antenna to the input of the amplifier, then connect the output to the TV's antenna input. You also need to plug the amplifier into power. Use a distribution amplifier for multiple TVs or use a separate antenna for each TV.

If you have more than one TV, ideally, you should have a separate antenna for each. Splitting the signal decreases the signal strength, especially if the cable distance from the signal splitter and one or more TVs is long.

A more practical solution is to use a distribution amplifier. You connect the main feed from the antenna to the input on the amplifier and connect the outputs of the amplifier to your TVs. Distribution amplifier prices vary depending on the brand, model, and the number of outputs provided.

Get an attenuator. If you are too close to the TV transmitter, and the signal is overloading your tuner or DTV converter box, use an attenuator to reduce the signal strength. Ideally, an attenuator with a continuous adjustment gives you the ability to set the amount of attenuation gain needed for different channels. The most common type is a small inline unit that you insert between the antenna and TV or DTV converter box and that has a fixed amount of reduced gain 3db, 6dB, 12dB.