DIY 4-Bay UHF Antenna

December 28th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal | Technology - (0 Comments)

I decided to try and make a TV antenna from many different online resources I have read. The Antenna I made was a 4-Bay bow-tie antenna. You will see this called a coat hanger antenna also, because you can make the whisk out of coat hangers easily. I first read about this antenna from this website, but I am sure its been on the internet long before this. My goal was to get some vhf channels in ( channel 7,9 and 12) , and since this antenna is mostly UHF, I found some modified designs by mclapp that help produce a small gain in the VHF-HI range.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~mclapp/Antennas/4baystuff/4%20bay%209%201-2%20element%20layout.pdf
http://www.frontiernet.net/~mclapp/Antennas/4baystuff/4%20bay%209%20inch%20phase%20line.pdf

Unfortunately the antenna didn’t work as well as I was hoping it would. The antenna worked for 12,51 (2-1), and 20 in my area, even though there is channel 48 and 28 which it was missing. My guess is I did something wrong.

The antenna was fairly cheap to build from all store bought parts. It was under 9 dollars from my local Menards.
Wire ( I used 14 gauge galvanized steel)
#6 wood screws
#6 washers
Board from the scrap bin ( 15 cents !!! )
Balun – Converts it over to coaxial cable.

If anyone has any suggestions on why it doesnt work as well as my DB2, let me know :)

I would like to note: I am not an antenna expert, just a beginner. Just going off what I have read online for information.

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Seven Remix XP

December 25th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Technology - (0 Comments)

So I was unhappy about windows 7 and I didnt feel like messing around with it to get it to work properly with my older PC, so I seen on lifehacker an article called Make Windows XP look like Windows 7. I thought I would try it out, and so far I really like it, it gives xp a new look. In the end the main reason I like vista and 7 is due to the graphics user interface anyway, but due to lack of hardware, I am going to run xp.

My Desktop Screenshot

If your interested in check out the mod, Check out the original website at http://niwradsoft.blogspot.com/2009/09/seven-remix-xp-231.html which is in spanish.

Here is the google translate link
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fniwradsoft.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F09%2Fseven-remix-xp-231.html&sl=es&tl=en

My wallpaper I found is from the game EVE Online which I dont play, but the art reminds me of Battlestar Gallatica and Stargate

Widescreen 1920×1080

Full Screen 1600×1200

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Merry Christmas

December 25th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal - (0 Comments)

Merry Christmas!!! Its been a long year, and its coming to an end. I am on my stretch of a long winter break off from work and school, and I am going to enjoy it. The weather has been crazy, its snowing where we wanted to go ( SD/NE) but only raining here. Today it finally started snowing. Santa showed up, and made the kids happy. I got some great gifts from the family ( SDSMT t-shirt, Hangover, Super Mario Brothers Wii, Jelly Belly Jellybean Dispenser, and a new wallet). Hangover is a awesome move, I suggest watching it. Super Mario Brothers Wii is a very fun and hard game. Its a perfect blend of old and new Mario redesigned. You can play with up to 4 people, so far I have only played 2 and found it to be challenging when playing with multiple people due to the lack of room to be running around, bumping into each other, jumping on each other, and competing for mushrooms. My goal today is to get back on the treadmill and see if I can run my 3 miles like I was, I am guess it will only be 1 or 2 haha. Luckily school doesn’t start until Jan 11th, so I have a few weeks of breaks to play games and relax. Other then that, nothing new here. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.

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Twitter Updates

December 21st, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal - (0 Comments)

I added a plugin to import my twitter feeds once a week into a blog post. I thought this would be nice since I dont always write something but I post on twitter pretty regularly.

Winter snow fun!

December 13th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Personal - (1 Comments)

So today was a nice day out, so we went out and built some snowmen, I added a couple of photos and a video.

The Family
Picture 109
The Parents
Picture 110
The Kids and Dog
Picture 111
The Dog
Picture 112

New theme (again)

December 11th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Technology - (0 Comments)

Alright I got a new theme again, this time its true love haha. The name of this theme is Mystique it offers customizable options, backgrounds, theme layouts, webpage width controls ( my biggest pet peeve is fixed width pages that look bad), twitter controls, and more. So if you looking for something new, check it out.

mystique screenshot

Including screenshot incase I decide to change my theme in the future.

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Boxee Box

December 11th, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Technology - (1 Comments)

So Boxee and D-Link are coming out with a new piece of hardware called the Boxee Box. Overall it looks really neat, it has a nice design, includes the major outputs needed for a mediacenter ( assuming you have an open HDMI port), and looks to be small according to boxees blog post.

If boxee would like to send me one, I would be more then happy to review it 😉

I have included a few photos from the blog.

Hopefully its not to expensive and its a big hit, boxee has a great future!

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Insignia NS-DV720P Video Testing

December 3rd, 2009 | Posted by tonyscha in Technology - (0 Comments)

Here is a couple of videos I uploaded with my new Insignia NS-DV720P

Original price the camera is $129.99 but we bought it on black friday sale at bestbuy.com for $69.99. I was hoping for better quality being an HD camera, but its hard to tell due to no natural lighting. Overall its easy to get the videos off the camera. It stores the videos on the 8GB SD card I bought for it. The videos copy off the device quickly unlike my blackberry, but none of my videos were over 1 or 2 minutes. The photo camera on it wasnt very good in the non-natural light. I will try to post some videos and pictures when I can take it outside.  Due to its cheap price I give it a 3.5 out of 5.