OTA Antenna Build

Since I got rid of my cable a couple of years ago, I've been enjoying free over-the-air (OTA) television. Definitely one of the benefits to living in a city versus the small rural area I grew up in! Slowly more and more OTA channels have been showing up but with the digital transition that happened on August 31, now all the channels that I get are digital.

Because my television is older and doesn't have a built-in digital tuner, I've been using a set of old-school rabbit ears to grab the analog channels and then an antenna I bought from Monoprice to grab the digital channels. Once everything went to digital, I wanted to go to a single antenna and connect it to my external tuner.

After reading information on-line and talking to James and Roo, I decided to take a bit of time and built a simple antenna of my own. Being located in Barrhaven (south Ottawa) I was already pretty lucky in that my location allowed me to receive all the local channels already available, so the antenna build was more for fun than hoping to get more channels out of it.

For resources I read through Roo's blog, got some building tips from here (although he did a bowtie), and got the specs from here. I built the GH one, no reflectors, and the specs from the GH4 table.

My material list:

- I went Home Depot and grabbed a 1x6 board from their pile of scrap wood ($0.79).

- got a length of household electrical wire from a friend who happened to be doing some electrical work. I stripped the wire and then used the method of attaching it to a drill to straighten it out.

- bought an matching transformer from The Source.

- used some screws I had around the garage

- bought some washers from Home Depot

- got 2 electrical conduit brackets from a friend (also available at Home Depot)

Basic build ideas:

- I measured out the exact locations for the bends and hammered nails into my workbench. Then I used those to help form the wire into the right shape.

- Attached the copper wire to the 1x6 using the screws and washers.

- Attached the matching transformer to the copper wire.

- Attached a Channel Master 7777 Pre-Amp to the bottom of the board.

- Used the conduit bracket as a holder for the rabbit ears.

- Wired the new antenna and the rabbit ears to the CM7777.

- Nailed a spare 2x4 block to the bottom. This would help with mounting it in the attic.

I placed the antenna in the attic and put it flush against a joist, and clamped it there using a cheap C-clamp from Home Depot. The 2x4 block keeps it from slipping left/right. I am lucky in my location in that I am located almost directly between the 2 main towers and the joists in my attic run perpendicular, so I didn't have to do anything fancy as far as building a rotating mechanism.

Here are some photos of the antenna. Note that this was before I used the drill method to straighten the wires so the final product looks a lot better.

Unfortunately when I had my house built, at the time I didn't think it was worth the $200 that the builder wanted to charge to run a conduit from the basement to the attic so I had to come up with another way to run the wire. Luckily I was able to scan a lot of house construction photos and find a cold-air return duct which was accessible and didn't have too many turns in it, before it hit the basement. So from the attic I ran a coax cable to the basement where all my home wires are. Although they say you should plug the power to the CM7777 as close to the tv as possible, I put it here in the basement because I wanted to get as strong as a signal as possible to multiple tvs. (I have one in the basement by the treadmill, was thinking about running a line to my home computer to experiment with recording shows, etc)

Honestly I wasn't expecting much for new channels, etc but I was pleasantly surprised when I did a new channel scan and 3 PBS channels from the US showed up! Here is a list of all the channels I get: CBC English, CBC French, GlobalTV, CTV, CTV2 (formally AChannel), Omni 1, Omni 2, CityTV, CHCH, TVO (TV Ontario), CTS (Crossroads Television), 2 French stations, and the 3 PBS stations.

So overall I'm pretty happy with the results. The antenna build was quick and cheap. The added extra pre-amp wasn't cheap, but it definitely improves the results over the long wire run. Running the wires from the attic to the basement was a pain in the butt, but not horrible. And now I get all the channels perfectly along with some new US ones.

Art in the House

Recently I decided that I needed more artwork in my house and was looking for something unique. At the office we have artwork in the halls and one particular piece is fractal art done by Phil Northover (Steve's brother) and it caught my eye.

So I contacted Phil and took at look at the different images available on his web site and decided on a couple of ones that I really liked. Together with the help of Phil and Jeem I got 3 prints done. (2 smaller ones and a large one) I took the prints to Display Laminating here in Ottawa to be laminated and mounted.

The final results were fantastic! I am extremely happy with how they turned out. Here is a photo of the larger one which is in my living room.



And what are the odds that 2 out of the 3 images that I selected (out of a gallery of over 50) were the same ones that the guys chose for the front and back covers of the new Butterflies and Zebras CD??

Thanks to Phil and Jeem for helping me put it all together!

Photos - Lagos, Portugal

Note: I didn't just get back from vacation... I'm just getting around to publishing some photos of my trip last summer.

After spending 3 weeks traveling in France, I went to Portugal for a week of relaxation. Here are some photos from Lagos, Portugal...

This is just a cool green building.


The RedEye bar and Three Monkeys were two of the bars we went to.



Apparently you aren't allowed to play your trumpet on this street. ;-)


A view of one of the beaches. This one was smaller and quieter than the main beach.


A view up the street in the town.


Another street view.


Since I hadn't planned on going to Portugal at the start of my vacation, I didn't pack a beach towel. So we went to a few stores to pick one up. And since you're on vacation and you're silly.... who can resist a "stupid bear" towel?


This is the bigger beach. Lots of people there!


A view of the walkway along the water.


We never made it here but apparently they *might* have the best food in town. There was a coconut curry soup on the menu which sounded good. Next time....

Photos - Cycling in France

Note: I didn't just get back from vacation... I am just getting around to publishing photos from my trip last summer.

During my summer vacation to France I spent a week on a cycling tour organized by my friend Sue at The Physical Life. It was a fantastic trip in all respects. Super-organized, really nice hotels (mansions!), great food, and a good group of people to be around. Here are some photos from the week of cycling through the sunflower fields in the Loire Valley....

Off to a good start. After being picked up by Sue in the van, we headed to our first hotel. It was raining the first day but that didn't stop Sue and Julien (the other guide) from putting on a fantastic "traditionally French" themed lunch for us.


A typical setup outside the hotel in the morning. A snack table where we can load up with trail mix and our favorite snacks for the day while Sue and Julien get the bikes ready.


Did I mention that in France at the fancy restaurants there is a whole course devoted to cheese? This is someone's plate (not mine I don't think?) for the cheese course for dinner the first night. Yes this is what was chosen from the gigantic cheese platter. Wow.


We were cycling in areas with lots of sunflower fields so of course I had to grab a photo of them.



And then some people will stop at nothing to get a good photo of them in a sunflower field...



Decorative bike on the side of the road in a small town along the way during our travels. This was quite a common scene. Biking is embraced and encouraged on the roads in France and cyclists are well respected by drivers. Can you imagine a car in Ottawa following you on a road for 10min until they thought it was safe to pass?!?


We had some really nice bikes for the trip.



This was the last hotel we stayed at. It was gorgeous. At dinner our second night there they put us in the back corner instead of in the middle of the room like on the first night. Hey, its not our fault we laughed and had a good time. :-)



All of us outside the hotel on the last morning before we went our separate ways.

Photos - Paris

Note: I didn't just get back from vacation... I am just getting around to publishing photos from my trip last summer.

A few random photos from my time in Paris including...

... the view from my hotel room. Yes, that's the Arc de Triomphe in the background. Pretty sweet hotel room actually. A 2 minute walk from the Arc, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and a subway stop.



...the Effiel Tower. Gotta have photos of the tower. It would be like going to Sydney and not taking 100 photos of the Opera House. Just not gonna happen.



... the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Pretty famous and near (in?) the Latin Quarter of Paris. A great spot for food and nightlife. Also a photo of the Seine River.




... and the Catacombs of Paris. Really creepy. And on the way out they search your bags. People seriously steal bones from graves???

Photos - Chateaus in France

Note: I didn't just get back from vacation... I am just getting around to publishing photos from my trip last summer.

While in France I visited a ton of castles. None were bigger than Chambord. And while there I even got to listen to an orchestra rehearsing for a concert later on that night.




Here is the Chateau Cheverny. It is used as the basis for the Tin Tin comics.



This is the Chateau Beauregard. Also known as the place where I realized I should have brought an extra camera battery and that taking a million photos of each castle was probably not a good idea.



This is the Chateau de Chaumont. It was pretty cool because I thought it looked a bit more medieval than some of the other castles.


I also went to the Chateau Azay-le-Rideau. Twice actually. Once by myself during the day and then again at night with the girls from the cycling trip to catch the sound and light show.



The Chateau Rigny-Usse is famed to be the basis of the Sleeping Beauty story.


The Chateau Villandry has some amazing gardens. I couldn't even imagine how much more spectacular they would be earlier in the season when everything was blooming.




The Chateau de Chenonceau is really neat because it has a cool looking bridge going across a river. It was a little overcast the day that I was there, but I think that turned out ok because the photos have a grey (almost black and white) feel to them.

Photos - Britanny

Note: yes I realize these photos from my vacation are about 6 months late in being published... :-)

For my first night in Britanny I stayed in a small medival town called Vitre. Really neat little place. Didn't get much more than a couple of sentences in the Rough Guide but a great place to stop over. I walked around the town and got some nice pics of the architecture. Also got a relatively cheap hotel room and there was a nice pub next door which was owned by the same guy as the hotel. It was there that I was introduced to the "raw egg on your pizza" thing. Yeah, you read that right.



I went along the short to an area commonly known as the "Pink Granite Coast" because of the, well, yeah large pinkish granite stones along the coast. The weather wasn't the best (overcast and light rain) but I got a couple of photos.



Since it was raining I got in the car and decided to drive for a while. I ended up in Carnac. The Rough Guide boasted something similar to Stonehenge but in actuality there are literally thousands of smaller, upright rocks. Weird... I wonder how they got there?




And finally here is a photo of a cool building. It would be even more impressive if I remembered what town I took it in. Perhaps it is from Tours?