Re: Connecting 16th century antenna wire to 21st century coax

[bruno.lerer@xxxxxxxxx]

I'm certain everyone is breathlessly awaiting a status report on this
project, so here goes: As suggested, I bought an Xacto knife from the
nearest Radio Shack; I rummaged and found somewhere a balun
transformer. [As an aside, on the balun are inscribed the magic words
"Sega Genesis"! If memory serves, that video game system was
prevalent at the time dinosaurs still roamed the earth, although
dinosaur and video game historians may quibble with the dating.]

I used the knife to strip about =BD inch of the twin lead wire and
embarked on the mother of all kludges: I sort of connected the exposed
twin lead wires to the input of the balun; connected an RG6 coax male-F
to the female-F on the balun; connected the other male-F end of the
cable to the coax input on a Radio Shack Accurian Over-the-Air HDTV
ATSC tuner (now discontinued, but the best $90 I've ever spent);
connected an S-video cable to the S-video out on the tuner and
connected the other end to the S-video in on a Philips RF modulator
(best $8 ever spent); connected yet another RG6 to the coax out on the
RF modulator and the other end to the coax input on an old (about 15-20
year) RCA TV in the basement.

THEN! I turned on the  ATSC tuner and the RF modulator and the TV, and
set the TV on channel 3 - and every OTA HDTV station known to man (at
least in my area - western Nassau County, Long Island), was there -
loud and clear! (Well, not so loud - sharp-eyed readers may have
noticed I didn't bother with the audio settings; this was just a test
of the antenna and wire).

So thanks be given to the gods of unknown antenna manufacturers and to
Belden - a 15-20 year old system is still working, with the flimsiest
of setup and no amplifiers! The wonders of technology.