This video is a brief review of the Midland WR-120 weather radio. It also contains instructions on how to build an antenna for it that is custom tuned for the NOAA weather frequencies using household items.
The Gray-Hoverman is a fantastic DTV antenna design that is easily made in less than an hour with materials around the house. Two elementary school kids show how easy and fun! it is to learn a little about radio by making a DTV antenna at home.
Learning through Making!
Naomi and Noah Miller make a new antenna for their grandmother to replace a store-bought antenna that wasn’t working so well. The project demonstrates how a simple antenna project can be a vehicle for learning alot about the basics of wireless engineering through discussions of the kinds of problems some viewers have faced transitioning to DTV. In a companion video, Naomi and Noah’s dad talk about some of the engineering basics that help us understand how to solve some of Grandma’s DTV reception problems. Projects like this one can introduce otherwise daunting technical discussions in a simple and easy to understand way.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Thanks! Feel free to get back to us if you have questions about the project
or other comments.
Note also that this is the “naked” version that’s less directional–there’s
no backplace so youcan get good gain on both sides. There are other
variations on the design that will give you very good gain in the High-VHF
with the addition of come rod-reflecctors on the back of the antenna. Also
directional gain can be improved greatly by adding a reflector behind the
“bent wire” parts of the antenna (the garden chicken wire and others are
popular).
I love this video and can’t wait to show it to my little makers! Thanks for
sharing, have a great fall!!
so cute !!!!!!
I made a GH like in the video but with coat hangers as I didn’t have the
wire. It performed worse than my 8 whiskers coat hanger antenna. I think
for it to perform well, one must make it exactly like the plan, with more
expensive material. Don’t use coat hangers (and a piece of board (^_^)
Totally charming and smart as tacks!
“and it’s home made.. so boom boom boom, you can make it!” Noah Miller
Awesome!!Your kids are great!
Plzeňské síto s Yaginami je lepší.
so cute!
The first one their dad and I built was slightly better than the commercial
passive antenna I was using at the time—got one more channel out of
20-some, and some of the stations were more stable. The spectrum analyzer
suggested that the gain was quite a bit lower for the homebuilt, but the
SNR was a bit better.
There are some mods to the design that will let you tweak the gain for 9-11
and 11-13. We’ve had good results from those hacks. Also note that a
backplane (mesh.. aluminum foil.. or other..) will increase your gain at
the cost of focusing the directionality of the antenna.
I’ve watched about 8-10 videos so far on antenna making and this is the
first one I have really enjoyed, your kids were great!!
I can so see this girl on the morning news. Great job, guys!
Bart Massey (hey bart!) and I made our first antenna at BarCamp Portland
2009 and simply covered the back of the wood with tin foil which worked
really well. the size of the “backplane” and its distance from the
collector part of the antenna is important but for a quick hack adding
things and experimenting can even lead you towards acceptable reception
thresholds.
Nice…Sweet vid and your kids are awesome.
James, your kids are amazing. Actually, amazing is not enough to describe
them 🙂 And you daughter is so smart. Every dad wishes to have such a
daughter. Girly, but with the boyish attitude. 🙂 and smart, of course 🙂
Oh… and God bless you and your family. :)
could yo use a house vhf /uhf antenna on this
There was no reason to drill the hole for your wire to be connected to the
speakers.
The Clone port is also a speaker port. (just so you know next time)