I have an odd sort of an antenna installation I have to deal with. At our camp we have an old Winegard compact amplified UHF VHF/FM antenna, and an Alliance rotor. This particular Winegard antenna if I'm not mistaken was available with and without and/or a small built in rotor. Mine came off a retrofit job many years ago and is amplified and either we never connected the internal motor or it didn't have one. I just don't recall. I cannot find any information on this antenna anywhere. This antenna was admittedly a compromise between signal and directionality and popular around 1985 or so and was designed for urban locations close to the transmitters.
Our camp is deep fringe and I would have installed something like an
8200, however I settled for this antenna at the request of the rest of the family who did not want to see something as large as an 8200 up there. The small antenna worked OK for several VHF stations which came in snowy but were watchable, but it did not receive any UHF. None of us among the three families who use the camp during different parts of the Summer ever really minded much about this. Our family only spends two weeks out there. The antenna was small and unobtrusive and as a bonus we also used it for FM, which worked satisfactorily.For those familiar with Winegard antennas, (and hopefully someone who can help me identify this one) the body of this unit is a black plastic case which looks like an old GA 8780 mast mounted preamplifier, except it's just a slight bit larger. The case mounted on top of the mast. Coming out of the black plastic case in sort of a semi circle arrangement I believe, ( I can't see the antenna right now as the camp is remote, and my memory isn't that good), are either four or six round radials about .
25inch diameter and 24 inches long.Now since the digital transition we can get just two stations and unreliably at that, and so I've finally convinced the other two families that we need to upgrade to a bigger antenna. So what I plan to do is remove the small antenna from the top of the mast, install the High band VHF/UHF HD antenna in it's place and then relocate the small antenna down the upper mast just above the rotor to preserve our FM reception. However, In order to do this I will need a section of mast bent 90 degrees and welded at two points. This small section will then be clamped or bolted to the main upper mast. See below:
-------------------- New HD antenna
--------------------- l l l l l l l small amplified antenna l l l l l............... l l l clamped to existing l l existing mast mast, (or bolted) l l Rotor l l l lower mast section
New mast section required:
l l................................ l l
The horizontal length of the bent section will be about 3 feet. I figure that I can make this out of a 5 section of pipe, (if nothing like this is commercially available that is). The small antenna is very light so I would prefer aluminum tubing if possible. A steel section would add a considerable amount of unbalanced weight to the upper mast
So can anyone please help me to identify this antenna? And also if anyone has any experience in doing something like this, can suggest a source for materials, or has any comments about it I would really appreciate hearing from you. Thanks, Lenny