Digital T.V. Antenna

The carrier frequency range here in the US are still the same with the switch from analog to digital modulation techniques. The FM band is in between the two VHF frequency bands used for television. The UHF frequency bands are now unused AFAIK but will be soon used by emergency responders and some other commercial users. (Where have I heard that before.) Your long antenna is still giving an extended reception range for your digital TV and your analog FM receiver. I would first consider trying to improve the support I have on an existing antenna so that the wind was less of an effect.

There is no digital part of the antenna. It's all analog coming in. Over the air digital television is encoded by amplitude modulating a carrier at eight distinctive amplitudes (8VSB) which are converted to 1's and 0's by the ATSC tuner.

You might want to save some bother with your antenna by considering this one. It gets over 600 5-star reviews on Amazon.

Paper-Thin-Leaf-Indoor-Antenna

My son thinks it might be a type of fractal antenna: wiki/Fractal_antenna

Here's the company's website: gomohu

If you leave the Yagi loop for zeros and a straight element for ones, you're OK for binary digital, but you may miss hexadecimals.(lol) S.M.

When you say it liker that everything makes sense.

There is no such thing as a digital or an analog section of an antenna. That is hype that is used to sell hardware. That being said the band being used varies by location. In my area we have both with multiple sub-channel on most of them. If your antenna system worked well for both VHF and UHF analog then it will work fine. In some cases you will find that you can have outstanding results with a very simple antenna. The UHF band was reduced from 83 channels to 69 channels several years ago and that is the part of the UHF band that was dedicated to emergency services.

There is no such thing as an "analog" or a "digital" antenna, although the polarization of broadcast signals may be an issue. Most US TV and FM broadcasts are horizontally polarized, although some TV and FM transmissions are circularly polarized to accommodate both standard broadcast TV and FM antennas and the whip antennas on cars. The frequencies currently used are the same as they have been since 1948, except that the high UHF channels (37, and 52 and above) are to be used for other services. Channel 37 is set aside for radio astronomy; some of the higher frequencies will be used for low-power TV channels, and some will be auctioned for commercial use.

Here are links to the frequencies now being used:

North American TV Frequencies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_broadcast_television_frequencies

USA FM Broadcast frequencies

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting_in_the_United_States

So put your hacksaw away. My personal experience with a very good but slightly weathered Winegard log-periodic antenna that was cleaned up and mounted in the attic with a rotator and an amplifier was very satisfactory, and corrosion and bird damage became things of the past. It also made a lightning arrester unnecessary. Good luck.

Consider making a bow tie antenna.

You can make one of these for about $3. Though I understand the theory, and have built antennas exactly as in the article, I also cut the top and inserted about a 4" vertical segment pointing straight up. I've no idea what it does (theory says nothing). I picked up the tip from an old antenna guy, and it seems to help on distant stations (??)

Most stations are now in the UHF, so you can discard the VHF part of your antenna, which is the long elements. FYI, I bought a $20 UHF antenna from Radio Shack, tossed it in the attic and was getting HD before the cable had it!

have you entertained the idea of buying a different type of antenna. I'm sure Radio Shack will have something for you.....

Sawing off part of the antenna.... it's different!!

i would like to thank everyone for your help.

Buy a new antenna by the time you've messed about on the roof,if you don't fall off, what will you have saved? Don't see the point.

Bazzer

Due to the nature of digital transmission the coverage area is defined by "go" or "no go" areas: it goes from ok picture to unwatchable picture quality (PQ) very quickly With analogue digital TV transmissions there is a more graceful degradation as the signal to noise ratio gets lower: the PQ falls from 5 downwards and you can still make things out if you really want to watch a programme at PQ 1.5 (even though PQ 3 is the level used in transmission planning.)

So with digital terrestrial television it is possible to reduce the gain on your yagi antenna (and by that you can reduce the number of elements, and therefore the length of the antenna) and get picture out of the end of the situation in some areas. If you are line of sight to the transmission tower you may be able to make a suprisingly large reduction in antenna size.

Large antennas tend to suffer more environmental damamage more quickly than smaller antennas. So there is a benefit in reducing the size of the antenna to be what is neeeded rather than the biggest one on th block. However size reduction is usually not done with a hacksaw as an aftermaket customsation.

I often prefer analogue transmissions as the digital artifacts present (usually generated by the broadcasters going for a high level of compression) can be distracting for me.

A friend of mine used a coathanger....