Hoverman in 1959, the device is called a super antenna because it greatly increases the range and number of channels you can pick up. What made me attracted to this design was the high gain plateau that covered most of the channels im interested in. This is the current design for my two grayhoverman builds. Its literally two pieces of bent copper wire taped to a piece of plywood, connected with a 75 to 300 ohm transformer like this one, stashed behind the entertainment center. In late 2007 and through much of 2008 the hoverman antenna was subjected to computer modeling and a number of improvements were made by a small group of antenna enthusiasts on the digitalhome. Hoverman antennas seems to be in the article pdf the hoverman, vud sept. In addition to online services like netflix, hulu, and crackle, you can still watch some overtheair channels like abc, nbc, fox, and pbs free of charge, but you have to be able to pick them up. Most often used antennas in this band are dipole or some variant of it, and higher gain is achieved by vertical stacking. Hoverman and was invented in the 1950s and it was patented in 1960s. The grayhoverman antenna for uhf television reception.
Im in a deep fringe area and my channel master 4228 with cm7777 preamp signal is scattered at best especially when the leaves are on the trees. Resembling a giant insect or alien creature, the antenna eventually fell into obscurity. Jan 22, 2015 this video shows how i designed, modeled, and built a gray hoverman antenna for tv reception. Jun 30, 2010 the gray hoverman antenna is well worth the effort to build. Build a massive hdtv antenna for long distance gains. It is designed for the uhf region, but above channel 54, the gain drops significantly. This is the last of several instructables covering construction of this antenna that receives uhf stations and, optionally, those in the high end of the vhf b. Some sources say they have had better success using gray hoverman homemade antenna. Mar 24, 2016 first tv super antenna gray hoverman in indonesia. How to make a grayhoverman uhf antenna know about life. I test both antennas on at a time in the same spot, at the same height and in the same direction. I live in the fringe area for reception, 44 miles from nyc and 51 miles from philadelphia, and with a decentsized commercial uhf antenna with preamp, i still couldnt reliably get digital channel 31 really uhf channel 26 from philadelphia.
Grayhoverman is an easy to build wideband uhf antenna. This all came about to finally obtain offtheair ota signals for our tv. Viezbicke timeandfrequencydivision instituteforbasicstandards nationalbureauofstandards boulder,colorado80302 tt0for v u. There are plenty of antennas you can buy to help boost your signal strength, but few of them are as effective as the grayhoverman antenna. Design of the grayhoverman antenna digital home canada. By adding some additional elements called narods you can also receive vhf band. The antenna offers sufficient gain for dvbt, dvbt2, isdbt and atsc reception. Nvm will be going with a gray hoverman antenna design. Gray hoverman hd antenna, ota before actually making it, id like to know if anyone else here has made one, or tried one out, any experiences or suggestions really, ive never worked with antennas, and i imagine that they can be tricky to get right. Gray hoverman, the wideband tv antenna air tv channels transmit on frequencies ranging from 170 mhz to 860 mhz. It does look like the one in the picture is over engineered, but it would last for years if erected outdoors. This antenna has moderately high gain, but its most important pattern feature is that the.
I built this antenna to go in the attic and got spectacular results with it just sitting on the floor in an aluminumsided house. Increase the number of overtheair and soon to be digital television channels you can receive with a simpletoconstruct antenna. How is double bay gray hoverman antenna abbreviated. The time and effort needed to make the jig will pay off in the. Building an antenna for vhf channel 11 and uhf channel 16. Dual bay, installed in the attic pointed towards buffalo, and use a two antenna system to get all the free tv required.
Guesstimating an angle of 70 degrees and setting the tv to autoprogram. Please note the straight reflector at the top and bottom that is 6 millimeters from the antenna elements. Feb 21, 2010 since the ball had started rolling in constructing antennas previously for my wireless client and the access point, i began to search for a good high gain uhf antenna. Grayhoverman tv antenna reflector rods part 14 steps diy tv antenna, wifi antenna. In this adorable little video, makers in the making, naomi and noah, show you how, proving that its so easy, even a child can do it with a little prompting from dad behind the camera. There is a newer designs address this problem by adding narods not a reflector or director to both ends of the antenna. This massive build, based on the grayhoverman model, can pick up signals from around 60 miles away, making it suitable. Grayhoverman, the wideband tv antenna diy tv antenna. The idea behind this antenna is to replace my existing channel master 4bay antenna cm4221.
Shariff2 1school of physics and material sciences, faculty of sciences, universiti teknologi mara, 40450, shah alam, selangor, malaysia 2academy of contemporary islamic studies acis, universiti teknologi mara. The gray hoverman antenna has been designed by doyt r. On several web forums one of the leading contributors to antenna design and computer modelling is a guy from delaware, usa with the user name 300ohm who has done a huge amount of work on the gray hoverman, and i also mentioned j3d, who has also done crucial design work on the gray hoverman antennas on his own free time. The vhfhi band covers 175 to 230 mhz, while uhf covers 470 to 860 mhz. Some sources say they have had better success using a gray hoverman homemade antenna. I can help you find the right antenna to fit your needs. The grayhoverman antenna for uhf television reception march 11, 2008 updated march 22, 2008 corrected sbgh performance plots this project is dedicated to doyt r. Hobbyists create diy super tv antenna archive high def. The antenna has 14dbi at its resonant frequency, and does. There is nothing wrong with the channel master antenna, mainly im just curious if i can construct a better antenna.
To our surprise, the antenna has adequate, even superior, performance on the highvhf band channels 7. In fact, rs used to offer an 8 bay version of this design several years ago, but apparently dropped it in favor of various overpriced yagi designs. Here are some tips compiled from my build of a gh6 antenna having straight narods, but these hints can be useful no matter which of the many va. Any information on the performance of the grayhoverman. The gray hoverman if built right can do slightly better on some uhf frequencies but will not get any vhfok maybe if you live next to the transmitter if you want to really get serious in antenna building then you can move up to custom built yagis. Note the license information printed on the drawing, which is offered free for. I had chosen the gh10n3 version of the gray hoverman. With the olympics coming up, and my local nbc affiliate being in vhfhi, im finally breaking down and building a grayhoverman fractal antenna. Only recently that i had the time to construct an antenna again. The 5 coolest diy tv antenna plans anyone can build. This is a safety feature and prevents the antenna arcing to the woodwork, although that is very unlikely to happen if you keep the power levels down. The reasons were better gain and its dual band nature, uhf and vhf band iii.
One of our most searchedon and linkedto subjects is how to make a grayhoverman dtv antenna. I only dare writing this title after try to search 3 times, and found no post about making gray hoverman super antenna from indonesia. The grayhoverman antenna is free, not something that manufacturers can sit on or make decisions about for you. So just push the channel master curve a little to the left to see how a retuned design might compare.
Grayhoverman antenna performance designs, schematics, and diagrams join the digital forum discussion the grayhoverman antenna designs, schematics, and diagrams. The hoverman antenna was invented in the 1950s by doyt hoverman before the advent of computer modeling, and appears to be a variation for uhf of the much earlier chireixmesny shortwave antenna. The grayhoverman homebuilt tv antenna can be assembled from common plastic plumbing pipe and fittings. It is not equivalent to home made bowties it smokes them easily in totally fair and balanced testing, and we will gladly prove it. It should be noted first and foremost that i am not an antenna design expert. All the dtv stations in the area are between 65 and 82 degrees at ranges of 7 to 15 miles. Any information on the performance of the grayhoverman fractal antenna. The tradeoff is that the gain of the gray hoverman antenna falls off rapidly at higher channels, and especially above channel 54, where it has less gain than the 4228. Mar 17, 2008 so a bunch of television antenna heads have come up with a massively improved design for a uhf antenna which they say blows away current designs. There are plenty of antennas you can buy to help boost your signal strength, but few of them are as effective as the gray hoverman antenna. In the past, air tv channels were broadcast on frequencies ranging from 170 mhz to 860 mhz. Gray designs, schematics, and diagrarrys ore copyr.
The designs presented on this page are hovermanstyle hdtv antennas that utilize a gapless reflector making them easier to build than my revison2 designs. The gray hoverman antenna final assembly is straightforward once all the parts are made. Below is a link to the one i built, and it is much simpler than the others i have seen and a lot cheaper to build. An analysis of radiation pattern and standingwave ratio swr. Exceeded the performance of a channel master 4bay antenna.
Stack two gray hoverman antennas and the model shows better incore uhf performance than the popular channel master 4228 8bay bowtie antenna. Stampeder can you help me with a double bay grey hoverman antenna build i want lengths of the phase lines, spacing of the phase lines. It looks like a bunch of enthusiasts updated the design for the modern uhf band and renamed it the gray hoverman. It is particularly sensitive in the uhf frequency range, the same range used for the majority of digital television transmissions. I was wondering if i could get some feedback from anyone using a similar antenna as to its performance. Jan 22, 2015 i recently designed and built a homemade antenna for tv reception. The gray hoverman antenna construction for meteor observation. Gray hoverman antenna ultra high frequency antenna radio. The willingness of so many people to freely share their talent, time and expertise are demonstrated by the free. Below is link to pdf drawings that you can download showing measurements.
I decided to build the gray hoverman antenna after seeing the published simulation results. This study is to construct and modifying the gray s hoverman antenna to obtain the highest gain thus improved its sensitivity. Jun 15, 2017 gray hoverman and fractal bowtie comparison. Has anyone made of these lately and is this truly a good. Very good antenna for both analogue tv and dtv, especially dtv as it outperforms cheap yagis, log, panel and other commercial antennas. We tested the vhf performance of this screen hoverman as well not expecting much. Choose your tape cheap is ok and tape your antenna to the board.
How to make a grayhoverman uhf antenna in the 1950s, doyt hoverman designed and patented a television antenna that was sold commercially throughout the next few decades. I already started constructing my double gray hoverman and the homemade preamplifier adl 5602 thanks to serndipity of lumen. Hdtv antenna gray hoverman vs fractal bowtie youtube. Sep 15, 2015 the grayhoverman antenna designs, schematics, and diagrams. Aug 07, 20 i left the standard single bay gh6 gray hoverman antenna at the rented house when i moved out to my new place. Grayhoverman, the wideband tv antenna one transistor. After a while, my attention was immediately focused on a little known, at least to me, gray hoverman antenna. Tinkeringobsessed blog make posts a guide by john park to. You can read more about the history of this design on their web page. It appears that the frequency can be adjusted by altering all dimensions by the ratio of newold frequency. Dimensions of homemade hoverman antenna pacific coast.
What follows is a step by step photo shoot of my version of the venerable hoverman uhf tv antenna based on a design from the late 1950s. The singlebay grayhoverman antenna definitely is a compromise, trading size against performance to yield a small size that can easily be used indoors or in an attic. The problem is your cbs channel is being transmitted on vhf channel 12. After a while, my attention was immediately focused on a little known, at least to me, grayhoverman antenna. An analysis of radiation pattern and standingwave ratio swr of the gray hoverman antenna z.
The grayhoverman antenna has been designed by doyt r. While its not original gray hoverman design the dr. A photograph of a typical corner reflector is shown in figure. Mar 05, 2015 lets examine the antenna in a test setting showing the real azimuth and elevation patterns. Since this is a dual bay antenna, there are more heavy copper wires going from here to the matching spot on the upper bay. Jan 18, 2015 grayhoverman is an easy to build wideband uhf antenna. And while it has proven to be very effective in many instances, it lacks a certain coolfactor. Half wave dipole tv antenna, impedance and gray hoverman.
Back to the hoverman, a single bay antenna consists of a single elemental pairing, where a dual bay consists of two sets of elements joined together to increase gain. John e davis has several antennas based on gray hoverman. It looks like a bunch of enthusiasts updated the design for the modern uhf band and renamed it. The following plots show the hoverman at rf channels 7, 9 and. This jig makes it easy to form the zigzag active elements needed for every version of the grayhoverman tv antenna, using prepared links of common quarterinch diameter copper tubing. So its curve may be closer to that of the grayhoverman. Grayhoverman antennas original hoverman variations, incl antennacraft g1483 and radioshack 151627, sbgh single bay gray hoverman and dbgh double bay gray hoverman analyzed for hivhf and uhf performance using 4nec2. Whats more theyve gone and released the design for this new gray hoverman super antenna via a gpl license so its free for all.
The grayhoverman, if built properly, can outperform their equivalent commercial antenna and there are tests that support this. The gray hoverman antenna construction for meteor observation z. The mclapp modified bowties are probably the best all around for capturing nearby vhfhi and long distance uhf. Mar 11, 2008 the grayhoverman antenna for uhf television reception march 11, 2008 updated march 22, 2008 corrected sbgh performance plots this project is dedicated to doyt r. And really, coolfactor is what you should be shopping for. Feb 08, 2009 25 thoughts on gray hoverman uhf antenna. Receiving all these frequencies is difficult when using a single antenna. Most of them are variations on the original grayhoverman design. The following two graphs show the performance of the hoverman screen antenna at three uhf frequencies representing the almost the entire range of todays uhf tv band channels 14 51. I left the standard single bay gh6 gray hoverman antenna at the rented house when i moved out to my new place. Dbgh double bay gray hoverman antenna acronymfinder. New grayhoverman super antenna the red ferret journal. Please give me a call if you have any questions regarding a tv antenna selection. The grayhoverman antenna designs, schematics, and diagrams.
Grayhoverman, the wideband tv antenna air tv channels transmit on frequencies ranging from 170 mhz to 860 mhz. Nvm will be going with a grayhoverman antenna design. Since wineaard actually controls the antennas production, it may not be available from any other source except radio shack, as it is not currently a popular antenna design. Or, if you already have an account, please login now. Nov 26, 2017 the designs presented on this page are hoverman style hdtv antennas that utilize a gapless reflector making them easier to build than my revison2 designs.
This video shows how i designed, modeled, and built a grayhoverman antenna for tv reception. Several web pages have sbgh plans, a good example is here. I use the four bar signal meter on my tv to document. The grayhoverman antenna final assembly is straightforward once all the parts are made.
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