Back to basics – Coat Hangers Rule airwaves

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts, Quitting Cable

So, my fancy-schmancy single-bay Hoverman antenna looked cool.  It worked well, considering that it was 75 feet from my headend in my house.  The problem – the cable run was 75 feet from the headend in my house.  I couldn’t just re-route it because I needed to keep the ground bonded to my house ground.  What to do, what to do.

I decided to try putting it in my attic, but the single-bay Hoverman is some 38 inches tall, and my attic space was 30 inches.  In desapair, I looked around my garage and saw my old coat hanger hoverman that I had made.  It sat collecting dust, waiting to be donated to a friend.  It was about to become supremely useful again.

Long story short, the coat hanger Hoverman is now in the attic, the cable run is now 25 feet long, and the signal strength is superb.  The amazing thing is that the antenna is up there, sitting behind a metal duct, beside some other metal conduit.  Just sitting there, pointed in the general direction of the general area of the TV transmitters many miles away.  It is a superbly ugly and elegant piece of garage tech.