Dallas Cowboys, DTV, Wife and Hex Beams

So what do the Dallas Cowboys, Digital Television over the air broadcasts, my wife and the Hex Beam have in common…

You’re probably thinking…

“Man… John has lost it. He’s blogged one post too far… On Halloween afternoon too…”

Hang with me for a moment.

Wife needs Dallas.

We live in Redskins territory.

Local stations and Dish TV are only showing the Redskins game of course. However, Charlottesville and Richmond might be broadcasting other games.

So the next 30 minutes I gathered parts and put up the dual bay four bowtie antenna on my Field Day Hex Beam mast rig.

The tripod is one of those roof top models that will bolt to the rafters. I use Wal-Mart tent pegs in the mounting holes; They are a perfect fit.

That TV rotator is the same used for the hex beam during Field Day. It is really not enough power for the Hex Beam, but is perfect for this antenna.

There is a TV Preamplifier at the antenna feed point. This unit has proven very helpful out here in the boonies.

The above picture shows a close up of the antenna. The poor thing has been through the ringer a few times. All the plastic brackets on the left are broken. Some judicious use of tiewraps brought things back together.

This antenna is an interesting study on arrays. Looking at half the antenna…

…each vertical assembly has four elements organized in two pairs: One top pair and one bottom pair. Each element of each pair is connected with a reversed (180 degree phase shifted) parallel transmission line to ensure the net resulting combination remains in phase. Each pair is connected in parallel in between with no phase shift. Two of these four element assemblies are then combined left and right in phase to result in eight individual elements in a large phased array for the UHF TV band. Simple, straightforward and it works.

So anyway, I connected the rotator controller, preamp power supply and finally made connection to the Welfare DTV Decoder bought with the $40 coupon and, after a bit of searching… DALLAS. The wife jumped from the chair to give my a hug. Imagine, a Dallas fan hugging a Redskins fan; It can happen.

Oh oops did I do that? Did I mess up the view from our bedroom window with the DALLAS DTV Antenna? Well honey I guess we will have to find a new place for the DALLAS TV Antenna higher still and we might as well put the homeless hex beam…

…up there too.

I hope you have a Happy Halloween…

I just did.