They have television over the air now?, Part 3

Published
by
Sam
on January 6, 2010
in 930posts
. 1 Comment

In my two previous posts about antennas, I explained what I did to research and install an over-the-air TV antenna. Now that I’ve gotten everything installed, I’ll share with you my results.

The Channels

These are all the stations (including subchannels) that I pull in with my new installation.

If you take all the major stations and add their subchannels, that’s 30 channels!  Granted, there are three 24 hour weather channels, two children’s channels, a bible channel, and ten foreign news channels, but the ratio of channels I watch to channels I don’t watch is about the same as it would be on cable TV.

Quality and Reception

All the of the major channels (NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, MyTV, PBS, CW, ION) are in HD. There is a mix of 720p and 1080i, but it all looks the same on my 32-inch 720p TV, and I have to say it looks pretty amazing.

The MHz channels and all other subchannels are broadcast in 480p, which while not as good as HD, does not look terrible.

Since this is all digital, it’s pretty much all or nothing. There is no graceful signal degradation like there was with analog signals. That does present a problem with a few channels.

WDCW is the worst offender, since the tower is located about two miles farther away and two degrees off from all the others. Occasionally I can’t get a signal from that station at all.

The other two that have issues are WJLA and WUSA, and problems usually happen when there is a heavy overcast. These stations are the only ones that broadcast on VHF, so my guess is that my antenna is less effective at pulling in that band.

Future Improvements

The first thing I plan on trying is a pre-amplifier, which should eliminate the problems we’re having with the stations I mentioned. Also, we sometimes get little tears or warps in the picture, which I assume is the result of interference. Hopefully a pre-amp will also take care of this problem.

As an alternative, I could always go with a bigger antenna. The longer the boom, the farther away I should be able to pull in signals. While I am totally in favor of this idea, I think my wife would rather stick with something smaller.

Conclusion

So far, my broadcast TV experiment has been going great. We are able to watch most of our favorite shows as they air. (Interestingly enough, sometimes we prefer to just watch them on Hulu). I get to watch some of the sports I’d been missing out on. Most of what we miss gets filled in with Hulu and Netflix streaming.

Most important of all, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! keep my wife busy long enough for me to get other things done.

My next project in the home theater department will probably be putting together a PC with XBMC or Boxee, mainly to be able to watch Hulu. Sounds like another blog post!

Signing off…

Update: I almost forgot about this but I wanted to thank Joe for helping me install my antenna. He took an entire Sunday out of his time to help me out. Thanks Joe. You’re a true pal.

Google DNS

Published
by
Edwin
on January 4, 2010
in 930posts, The more you know... and Tips and Tutorials
. 0 Comments

A few weeks ago, Google announced that they are making available public DNS servers. They claim that it “provides many benefits, including improved security, fast performance, and more valid results.” And for some people, that might be true. They also claim that they are adhering to DNS standards, unlike many ISP and OpenDNS implementations, by not redirecting you to some crappy ad-filled search page when you fat-finger a URL. And as for privacy concerns:

With Google Public DNS, we collect IP address (only temporarily) and ISP and location information (in permanent logs) for the purpose of making our service faster, better and more secure. Specifically, we use this data to conduct debugging, to analyze abuse phenomena and to improve our prefetching feature. After 24 hours, we erase any IP information.

Google goes on to say that they are not tying any information to your Google account, or sharing it with anyone else. They don’t say they aren’t going to use it, though, but any data they retain won’t be personally identifiable. That eases most of my concerns. And it’s far better than most other DNS providers offer. I would not trust my ISP not to sell my information, and OpenDNS openly admits they are selling that information, but claim that it cannot be traced back to individuals.

So far, Google is coming out on top in privacy concerns and adherence to standards. But what about performance? Enter NAMEBENCH.

Namebench is a recently released tool that benchmarks the response time of hundreds of public DNS servers and shows you the best on for your situation. Just open the file and click “Start Benchmark” and after a short wait, it spits out a handy webpage with the results and recommendations. Very easy.

Results may vary.

As for the results…..I ran the test 5 times, and got 4 different results. After another 10 attempts, a clear winner had emerged.

Most people probably aren’t going to notice a difference in speed or stability, but then again, this blog isn’t for “most people.”

How-To: Delicious, Easy Pancakes on the Cheap!

Published
by
Charlie
on January 3, 2010
in 930posts
. 0 Comments

With the crappy economy taking its toll on many aspects of every day life these days, there’s one thing that it doesn’t have to affect: your ability to make delicious, fluffy pancakes on the cheap!

Here’s how:

  1. Go to your local market and procure a box of “JIFFY” buttermilk biscuit mix. The average price for a box of this versatile goodness is typically $0.50-$0.65 — an incredible deal!
  2. Follow the instructions for making pancake/waffle batter on the back of your box of “JIFFY,” except:
  3. Instead of using 1 cup of water or milk as the directions suggest, use 1 cup of half-and-half.
  4. Mix everything together in a bowl with a whisk, but don’t over-mix. As soon as everything is blended together, STOP mixing! (Credit goes to Alton Brown for this tip).
  5. Cook in a pan on medium-low heat with a little olive oil.

That’s it! For the price of one egg, 2 tbsp. butter, a $0.65 box of batter mix, and a cup of half-and-half, you can make pancakes that actually taste substantially better than your run-of-the-mill Bisquick hotcakes. One box of “JIFFY” will yield enough pancakes for two people, on average.

Yours for the low-low price of $0.65!

Recipe: Charlie’s Black-Eyed Peas

Published
by
Charlie
on January 2, 2010
in Recipes and The more you know...
. 0 Comments

While it won’t do you readers any good at this point, some of you may know that eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is said to give you good luck for the remainder of the year. Here’s my freshly-developed and delicious recipe for a New Year’s delicacy:

Charlie’s Black-Eyed Peas

Ingredients:

  • 1 Can black eyed peas
  • 4 Strips bacon
  • 1 Clove garlic
  • 1 Stalk celery
  • 1/2 Green bell pepper
  • 100% pure maple syrup
  • Crushed red pepper (dried)
  • Black pepper

Directions:

  1. Cook bacon strips in cast iron (preferred) pan using low heat until moderately crispy. While keeping an eye on the bacon, continue to Step 2. Set bacon and resulting grease aside. Do not discard grease!
  2. Gather garlic clove, celery stalk, and bell pepper. Finely chop all three ingredients.
  3. Empty black eyed peas into a medium saucepan. Add chopped garlic, celery, and bell pepper. Break each strip of bacon into 3-4 pieces. Add bacon to saucepan.
  4. Add a few teaspoons of bacon grease from the frying pan to the saucepan with the black eyed peas.
  5. Add maple syrup to saucepan to taste. I would recommend a few tablespoons — but don’t over do it.
  6. Add a few shakes of black pepper and crushed red pepper to taste.
  7. Stir well and simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring every 5-10 minutes.
  8. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas, Sector-Style!

Published
by
Joseph
on December 25, 2009
in 930posts and Fun Stuff
. 1 Comment

On the twelfth day of Christmas, at Sector 930, I got:

12 PLOWS-A-PLOWING

IMG_0997

11 SCREENS-A-GLOWING

wideview

10 HUNTERS LEAPING

view_320200_1_1227888149

9 TORRENTS SEEDING

dmca_cox-large

8 JAGERS BOMBING

Jagermeister

7 CALLSIGNS HAMMING

BewareOfHamRadio

6 LOVERS, EXCEPT JOE

51Q0ZXDX7AL._SL500_AA240_

5 FLAWLESS GEMS

diablo-2-items

4 SMARTRIP CARDS

3651367315_85b41405cf

3 MAC TVs

52362080

2 GODDAMN CATS

Screen shot 2009-12-25 at 9.34.24 PM

AND A POST HERE ON 930!

Screen shot 2009-12-25 at 9.37.17 PM

How to Give Your Cellular Provider the Gift You’ve Always Wanted!

Published
by
Charlie
on December 24, 2009
in 930posts, Projects and Tips and Tutorials
. 0 Comments

Howdy loyal 930 readers! Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings to all! Charlie here, the undercover redneck, about to tell you how to give your cellular provider the gift you’ve always wanted: free unlimited SMS text messaging! I’m talking 100% free (as in beer).

“That’s impossible!” you’re must be saying. “Not in this country!”

Folks, behold the power of Google! Some may argue that Google is becoming the new Microsoft, or worse, an even more powerful entity with access to unfathomable terabytes of the world’s personal information. But who cares, with a corporate motto like “don’t be evil,” how can you not trust them? Especially when they offer free text messaging!

Enough banter already — here’s what you need to get free unlimited SMS text messaging:

  • A Google Voice account: http://www.google.com/voice/
  • A Google Voice phone number (generally included with a Google Voice account)
  • A smartphone, preferably one capable of running the Google Voice app (currently BlackBerry and Android only)
    • Note: Any smartphone that has a decent mobile web browser will work via the Google Voice web interface
    • Another note: A BlackBerry with a push email account is best suited for this setup. I’ll explain why later.

As you can see, the requirements are pretty basic. (It is assumed that if you’re nerdy enough to be reading this website, you’re going to have a smartphone and more than likely every type of Google account known to exist).

Now, if you’ve got a BlackBerry, this is how you can set it all up with minimal compromise:

  1. Log into your Google Voice account. Set up a new forwarding phone with your cell phone’s number. (Settings > Phones)
  2. Enable SMS to E-Mail forwarding. (Settings > Voicemail & SMS > “Forward messages to my email”)

    3. At this point, SMS messages sent to your Google Voice number will now be automatically forwarded to your email. If you have a BlackBerry with an email account that supports push email, you even receive text messages instantly — just like a real text message. The problem is that your BlackBerry will not differentiate between SMS messages you get via email forwarding and all the other emails you get on a daily basis. I don’t know about you, but I don’t instantly check my BlackBerry every time I get a routine email. This obviously creates a problem when you’re attempting to use a mode of communication where messages are expected to be delivered and read almost instantly. Step 3 addresses this issue.

  3. Log into BlackBerry’s email configuration (older BlackBerries do this via the BIS web interface, newer BlackBerries have an app that works right from the phone) and set up a new email filter in whichever email account Google Voice is forwarding your SMS messages to.
  4. When Google forwards an SMS message to your email, the subject line contains “[SMS]” followed by the sender’s name (if their name and number is entered into your contacts). Edit your new filter to catch any message with “[SMS]” in the subject. Then select “Forward messages to the device” and “Level 1 notification.” The key here is to set up a rule that grabs all email messages coming from Google Voice and forwards them to your BlackBerry as a “Level 1″ message. This allows you to differentiate your text messages and voicemail notifications coming from Google Voice from all the other emails that flood your inbox throughout the day.
  5. Edit your BlackBerry profile settings to choose a distinct sound/alert/ringtone for Level 1 messages. Select something that you want to hear every time you get a new text message or voicemail notification.
  6. Distribute your new Google Voice number to all your friends and family. Explain that they can keep calling you on your old number, or they can call you on your new Google Voice number (assuming you set up your cell as a forwarding phone), but if they want to text you, they’ll have to use your new Google number. This may confuse some non-technical types, so just tell them you got a new cell number and give them your Google Voice number if they’re confused.
  7. Start receiving text messages free of charge! Reply in kind by simply replying to the SMS forwarding email, or launching your Google Voice app or the Google Voice web interface and replying.
  8. Call up your cellular provider and tell them to shove their text messages where the sun don’t shine. If you don’t specifically tell them to block all incoming text messages, they’ll just cancel whatever texting plan you currently have (if you have one) and charge you per individual incoming/outgoing message.

I’ve been doing this for several months now, and it works without a hitch! Text messaging at the rates charged by commercial carriers is outrageously expensive. 160-character messages use almost no bandwidth — costing cellular providers next to nothing to route them — yet if you do the math, you are paying upwards of $1,300 per megabyte for the privilege of communicating in such a way that actually frees up carrier capacity by keeping you off the phone. After all, a few bytes of data uses a lot less bandwidth and a lot less spectrum than a voice channel used during a cellular telephone call would.

So, give yourself the gift you’ve always wanted — and help show the cellular providers in this country that we are no longer willing to spend $1,300 per megabyte for the privilege of sending text messages.

Getting the Most Out of Apple TV: A Handy 930 How-To! (Part One of Three)

Published
by
Joseph
on December 22, 2009
in Fun Stuff, Projects and Tips and Tutorials
. 1 Comment

With all of the various options for starting/maintaining a home media server, the lowly Apple TV is widely disregarded by “power-nerds” as a viable (or particularly useful) home media solution.  I may not have the technical expertise, prowess, or, frankly, patience to create an amazing home-grown media server, like Edwin, but I am quite the Apple geek, I enjoy pre-fabricated gadgetry, and I have employee discounts to use.*

And no, you can’t have any.

What you can have, however, is a practical guide to getting the most out of Apple TV, which you can get for free, right here, on the Sector!  What a deal!

I’m splitting this guide up into three parts, because I want to advise you on some of the prep work involved before receiving your Apple TV.  If you want to order one, it isn’t actually too late, the Apple Online Store is offering free next-day shipping through Wednesday.  In other words, buy some stock in FedEx for a quick kill.**

Chapter 1: “Should I Actually Order an Apple TV?”

Apple TV is great for:

  • People who use Macs, and dump countless dollars into iTunes.
  • People who use Windows, and dump countless dollars into iTunes.
  • People who have HDTVs.
  • People who are not interested in buying Blu-Ray discs.
  • People who lose their current DVDs all over the goddamn house and GOD DAMMIT WHERE IS MY COPY OF “THE SECRET OF THE OOZE?”
  • People who like all of their movies, music, and photos to be accessible from a central location.
  • People who like straightforward, easy-to-use, sleek interfaces.

It so happens that my mom (bless her heart) bought me a 32” HDTV for Christmas.  Sweet.  It also so happens that I am sort of an iTunes slave, and I have a Mac, and, well, that’s just kind of what happens when you work for Apple.  Whaddya know?

I’ll leave the extensive format war discussions to Sam and Andy Rush, but my short take on it is thus: I don’t like Blu-Ray.  I don’t think I really have a good reason to dislike Blu-Ray, I just don’t really like it.  Kind of like “that guy” at the college party who gets all the women to talk to him, effortlessly.  I don’t really know him, but I know he’s probably a douchebag.  Also, I don’t want to start a flame war about costs and Apple products, and formats, but I’m also having a hard time finding high quality Blu-Ray players for less than $200, and Blu-Ray discs are still hella expensive, while HD Movies on iTunes, for the most part, cost $15-19.99.  Just sayin’

I also don’t like “stuff,” I try to keep as little of it as possible; the less I have, the less I can lose or misplace or make a mess with.  I’m done with discs.  That’s just a personal thing, though.

Apple TV costs $229 from the Apple Store, but for some strange, bizarre reason, Apple does not include any component or HDMI cables.  In my opinion, that’s kind of like ordering a hamburger without a bun, but I guess people do that.  Do not buy HDMI or component cables from the Apple Store, or even Best Buy, for that matter.  Go to Target, RadioShack or Wal-Mart to save a few coins.

If you do not have an HDTV, do not order an Apple TV.

If you do not have broadband Internet, do not order an Apple TV.

If you do not feel like backing up your purchases to an external unit, do not order an Apple TV.  Losing a digital purchase, for whatever reason, is no different than losing a DVD.  If you lose it, you will have to buy a new one.

If you do not feel comfortable truly “owning” your content, do not order an Apple TV.

What’s that?  You got one anyway?  Cool.  It is actually quite a nifty gadget, and, like most Apple products, does more than people give it credit for.

Chapter 2: Prepping for Apple TV

Overview

Apple TV gets its data over wired or wireless Ethernet, via several methods.  It is possible to stream iTunes music, watch YouTube, view photos, listen to Internet radio, and, of course, “sync” your Apple TV with an iTunes library, much like an iPod.

This confused me at first, as I thought you could only stream iTunes content to Apple TV, which is not the case, as it is possible for Apple TV to store iTunes Library content locally.  This is also a misconception among my customers.  It is possible to transfer movies from your computer to Apple TV, and vice versa.  That is, if your content is purchased on the device itself, it can be copied to an iTunes library on your computer.  The device has a 160 GB HDD for content.

Step 1: Rip Your DVDs.

Apple TV does not play DVDs, which is where HandBrake comes in.  HandBrake is a free, very reliable, open-source piece of software for pulling DVD content from DVDs.

Now, the legality of ripping DVDs continues to be questionable; I’m not going to be held responsible for you if you distribute your ripped content in a way which violates copyright law.  I’m in the “if you own the DVD, it’s your DVD” camp, and have no moral objections to DVD ripping in this context.

If you need help using HandBrake, check the documentation on their website, this is not a HandBrake tutorial.  I do recommend you use “Apple Universal” (mp4) for the end format, however, and I personally shoot for a 1GB file size target for most movies, with 2-pass encoding.  Longer movies will warrant larger file sizes, though, so keep that in mind when you’re pulling the extended edition of Return of the King.

Ripping takes a long time, even on a fast Core 2 Duo.  Get a sandwich, something with bacon.  Rinse and repeat.

Step 2: Clean Up and Prep iTunes.

Apple TV absolutely requires you to use iTunes, but you probably knew that.  Once you’ve finished ripping your DVDs, it’s time to copy them into iTunes.  The easiest way to do this is to select “Movies” from the iTunes sidebar, and simply drag-and-drop movies into the pane.  You can also click “File,” and scroll to “Add to Library.”  From there, navigate to your movie file, and add it to your library.

IF YOU HAVE CONFIGURED iTUNES TO COPY ALL CONTENT TO YOUR LIBRARY FOLDER, WHICH I RECOMMEND, IT WILL LEAVE THE ORIGINAL FILE INTACT, LEAVING YOU WITH TWO COPIES OF YOUR MOVIE ON YOUR HDD.

ERASE THE FIRST COPY.

Once you’ve done this, you need to add the movie’s poster; it looks better in both iTunes and on Apple TV.

In order to add a poster to a movie, right click (or control+click) on the movie in iTunes.  Select “Get Info,” and then click on the “Artwork” tab.  The next step is to find a copy of the poster, which is best done by typing the title of the movie into Google Image Search.  For movie artwork in iTunes, use images that are around 700 pixels tall by 500 pixels wide.  For reasons that I do not understand, dragging and dropping film artwork into the artwork pane does not work, so I created a folder on my desktop called “movie posters,” saved the JPEGs into it, and applied them in iTunes via the “add” button in the artwork pane.


Screen shot 2009-12-22 at 9.10.50 PM

I’m still working on ripping my movies, but this is what my library looks like so far.


Screen shot 2009-12-22 at 9.14.36 PM

Next week, we’ll go over syncing, unboxing, and configuring Apple TV.


*The views expressed in this post are my own and do not represent those of Apple, Inc., FileMaker, or any of its subsidiaries.  For questions regarding Apple consumer policy, please visit http://apple.com/legal.

**I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR.  DO NOT TAKE MY FINANCIAL ADVICE IN ANY SERIOUS CAPACITY; I GOT A C+ IN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IN COLLEGE.  IF YOU SEND ME HATE MAIL AFTER YOU LOSE YOUR LIFE SAVINGS, I WILL LAUGH AT YOU WITHOUT REMORSE.

Microsoft tries, Bing App fails

Published
by
Joel
on December 17, 2009
in 930posts
. 0 Comments

In an effort to compete with Google, Microsoft recently released a Bing search application to the Apple App Store. Similarly to Google’s Mobile App, the Bing app provides access to all the Bing features including a voice search. According to Microsoft, Bing is the “Mobile decision engine that is always by your side” and that it should be used for ” quick answers, Web searches, product lookups, and local listings”.

After reading mostly good reviews of Microsoft’s app I was interested to see what all the hullabaloo was about, but I haven’t been able to and there’s a good reason for that. I can’t install the damn thing. Why you ask? It’s because my iPod touch is so ancient it doesn’t have a microphone. Yes that’s right, it won’t install because I failed a mic check. But wait, take a look at Microsoft’s own screenshot below:

Bing Mobile

Bing Mobile

Yup, you saw that correctly. That’s a search box. Whoever is using this app to find thai restaurants in Boston isn’t speaking into their phone or newer iPod. They’re doing it the old fashioned way. The web 1.0 way. The same antiquated way I would on my iPod touch. They typed it.

What makes matters worse is that Google’s mobile app, which Microsoft is attempting to thrust out of the limelight with Bing, doesn’t have this problem. In the settings section of Google’s app, the option for voice search is grayed out with a message stating that it is not available and the app is still 100% effective. It’s just missing a few bells and whistles.

The question now is why did Microsoft couple the voice technology so closely into their app that it can’t work on the mic-less iPods? It seems once again that Microsoft is striving too hard to battle Google without fully thinking out the solution to the problem. As a direct result, they’ve failed a basic tenet of software engineering: KISS, or “keep it simple, stupid!” and that’s what really grinds my gears.

56 minutes

Published
by
Joel
on December 14, 2009
in 930posts and Fun Stuff
. 0 Comments

That’s approximately the length of time Han Solo had to set up the shelter on Hoth before Luke died of hypothermia. Don’t believe me? Well, Wolfie over at Wolf Gnards has done a wee bit of fact finding to come up with that answer:

In a normal environment, a carcass gets cold in 8 to 36 hours losing an average rate of 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per hour. However, the ice world of Hoth is not an average environment. The Star Wars database lists that Hoth reaches nightly temperatures of -60 F. In a frigid, sub-zero environment, body heat can be lost almost 32 times faster. This means a Tauntaun’s body heat could drop almost 51.2 F every hour. Considering that Han Solo’s Tauntaun died of severe hypothermia even before it was cut open with Luke’s light saber, one could assume it’s core body temperature was already well below normal. The problem for Luke is if the Tauntaun’s body temperature reaches freezing point those once toasty guts, blood, and assorted alien goo, will in fact become a frozen coffin. If the Tauntaun died of cardiac arrest due to hypothermia with an average body temperature of 75 F (23 C), and if Tauntaun blood freezes at 28.4 F (-2 C), then Han has roughly 56 minutes to set up a shelter before Luke once again is in danger of losing his life in the barren wasteland of Hoth.

If you’d like to read the whole article, you can find it here.

They have television over the air now?, Part 2

Published
by
Sam
on December 14, 2009
in 930posts
. 1 Comment

In my previous post, I discussed how to gather the necessary information for installing an over-the-air TV antenna. To sum up, you need to know where the broadcast towers are and what frequency they broadcast on. In my case, I needed a rooftop VHF/UHF combo antenna, and I needed to point it just east of due north.

In this post, I’ll talk about the equipment I bought and how I actually installed it.

I got pretty much everything from RadioShack. I have given RadioShack a lot of shit in the past for being a crappy consumer electronics store, but they were the only store around that had everything I needed, including the antenna and mounting hardware. Home Depot and Lowe’s had none of it.

Equipment

The antenna I decided on was the Antennacraft HBU33. I could have gone with any number of brands, but RadioShack had this one. It is a high-VHF (channels 7-13) and UHF (channels 14 and up) combo antenna, and it’s supposed to have a range of about 60 miles. These specs fit my situation, since I’m about 45 miles away from the towers, and, despite the fact that most channels are on UHF, there are still two on high-VHF.

Depending on your own situation, you might be able to get a UHF-only antenna. They are smaller and supposedly more effective than a combo antenna. Also, if you are close enough to the towers, an indoor antenna is the easiest solution.

I also bought a tripod mount and 5 foot mast, also from RadioShack. There are several options available for mounting the antenna, such as an eave mount or a simpler mount, but a tripod mount was the easiest way to go for my situation.

The rest of the stuff I needed was some coaxial cable, grounding wire, and a grounding block. Luckily, I already had two satellite dishes on my roof with connected coaxial, and the cables already had some grounding wire attached to it.

As I wrote about in my previous post, AntennaWeb told me I would need a pre-amplifier. I decided to go without the pre-amp for now, since the antenna’s supposed range was about 60 miles. (I’ll talk about this more in a future post, but I might install a pre-amp sometime soon.)

After gathering everything together, I was ready to go.

Installation

You can choose to do this later on, but I assembled my antenna first. Mine mostly involved snapping the elements into place.

For installing everything, I got Joe to help me out, since at the time he did that kind of thing for a living.

The first thing we did was bolt the legs of the tripod to the roof. The tripod came with all the necessary hardware. It also came with sticky putty pads to put on the bottom of the feet. These ensure that a good seal is made around the bolts so as to prevent your roof from leaking.

After securing the tripod, the next step was to place the mast into the tripod. The mast rests on an L-plate at the bottom of the tripod and is secured by bolts. (I would take pictures, but it’s December and I’m not getting on my roof.) After that we attached the antenna to the mast using the supplied U bolt.

Since these long range TV antennas are highly directional, it was important that we pointed the thing in the right direction. With the help of Joe’s iPhone and the signal strength meter he borrowed from work, we got it where it needed to be.

At this point, everything was in place, and the last thing to do was connect the antenna to my house’s coaxial network. I grabbed the coaxial off of the satellite dishes and connected it to the supplied 300-ohm to 75-ohm impedance matching transformer.

An important step we made sure not to overlook is to properly ground the connection. A grounding wire needs to be run from the base of the antenna mast to a grounding rod. Also, the coaxial coming from the antenna needs to be attached to a grounding block, which is then attached to the grounding rod using more grounding wire. We did all this, and it should prevent a lightning strike from taking out my TV.

Since I use a cable modem for my internet needs, there was already a feed coming into the coaxial network. For now, I just wanted one room to receive the antenna feed. After some trial and error, we found which cable to connect to.

Then we went inside, used my TV’s built-in tuner to scan for available signals, and sat back and enjoyed HD over-the-air TV, FOR FREE.

Tune in next time, and I’ll wrap up with a discussion of the results, along with ideas for future improvements.