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With the CBCinstalling an HDTV transmitter in the area, I decided to look at OTA (off-the-air) HDTV as an alternative to Starchoice HDTV. With
the transmitter site no more than 25 kms from my house, rabbit ears or a folded dipole probably would work ok, but Im hoping some of the other
networks will also implement HDTV in the Ottawa Valley, so I thought I would put a bit more work into the antenna.
I looked at a number of antenna designs, courtesy of KQ6QV. In the end, I decided to build a Log-Periodic Dipole Array, mostly because it didnt
need a balun. As well, the beamwidth of the LPDA should be wide enough to receive signals from both the Camp Fortune and Manotick transmitter
sites.
I modelled 6, 7 and 8 element designs using 4NEC2 with the 8 element design having the fewest anomolies in the design range, when taking into
account the need to use a relatively low impedance boom/transmission line. With the 6 and 7 element designs I modelled, the larger dipoles in the
array affected both the impedance and front-to-back ratio when these elements became full-wave dipoles at certain frequencies.
1 316 0
2 282 55
3 252 104
4 226 147
5 202 186
6 180 221
7 160 252
8 144 280
I used hobby store 7/32 inch square brass tubing 30 cms in length for the two boom sections and bits of lexan to separate them by approx 5.5 mm to
achieve a boom impedance of approximately 125 ohms. The coax is stripped of its outer insulator and ran through one of the booms to form an
infinite balun in an effort to keep stray currents off the outside of the shield, which could upset the balance of the antenna.
It seems to work well, but the signal from the CBC transmitter is so strong I can receive it by pointing the antenna at my neighbours house to
receive the reflection, so Ill have to do some testing to see if it performs as modelled by NEC 2.
Here is the NEC file for the antenna. I recommend Aries 4NEC2
CM 8 ELEMENT LPDA
CM 470-810 MHz
CE
GE 0 0 0.
EX 0 8 7 00 1. 0.
PT -1
TL 1 11 2 11 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 2 11 3 10 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 3 10 4 9 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 4 9 5 9 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 5 9 6 8 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 6 8 7 8 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
TL 7 8 8 7 -125 0. 0. 0. 0. 0.
As well, I was asked for the dimensions for a bowtie antenna. I converted the DB2a from KQ6QVs website to a standard NEC 2 input card. In
essence, the reflector can be any metallic structure, including a wire mesh, as long as the rectangles are less than 1/10 lambda at the highest operating
frequency. Each element of the bowtie is approximately 16 cms long and the transmission line between the two bowties is 18.8 cm long with 4.4 cm
spacing, using 4mm diameter wire.
CE
GE 0 0 0.
EX 0 140 3 00 1. 0.
PT -1
EN