TV Antenna and Fractals

There are may plans online on how to make a TV antenna to receive digital signals. But also i just got done watching a NOVA show on PBS about Fractals.

Nova - Hunting the Hidden Dimension

A fractal is an infinitely long line or shape that no matter how much you zoom in, or how detailed you look, the repeating self-similarity pattern is the same.

For examples of fractals in nature there are things like trees, rivers, clouds, flowers, DNA, blood vessels, snowflakes, lightning and many, many more.

Here's how fractals are used to create mountains in computer animation in movies. Instead of writing a huge program for each little individual point, the fractal equation is used and it creates the mountain. For example, Jurassic Park used fractals to show raindrops on the dinosaur's skin.

This one reminds me of the Triforce in The Legend of Zelda

Long story short, it turns out that fractals also make great antennas. They are in all of our cell phones because of their great range of reception and compact size. That's why cell phones don't have those little flimsy pole antennas any more. The fractal antenna is inside.

So i started with the basic antenna plans seen here.
Then i took ideas from fractal antennas
I laid everything out that i thought i'd need
This was the basic fractal pattern i used to bend the wire
The wire after being bent.
After making 10 of the wire shapes above i started experimenting with them.

3 sided
4 sided
5 sided
6 sided
There were endless possibilities
I decided on combining 3 things:

• aluminum foil wrapped cardboard backing plate
• hexagon shaped fractal wire
• 4 piece wire antenna

This is the upper half
Here it is on the board. I wrapped the aluminum foil with rubber window screen so that the wires didn't actually touch the aluminum foil. Then secured it with hot glue on top of the solder points.
1" pvc pipe and bolts were used to raise the upper wires
Here's the finished product. I connected it to a 75 to 300 Ohm matching transformer, which is really the only thing i had to buy, it was $5.
I also made another version.
After connecting them to my tv i was able to check the signal strength. They both worked pretty well, picking up all UHF channels such as 2.1, 4.1, 7.1, .... Although surprisingly, the smaller antenna worked a little bit better.
I plan on trying a few more designs. I think the best idea would be to paint a 7 foot tall fractal design on a wall with metallic paint. It would look cool and possible get great reception. You could always paint over it and no one would know it was there.




CB Blogger