Homemade or cheap AntennasDirect/MeTV deal?
 

We've just moved into a basement suite in Coquitlam BC. And unlike other "basement suites" in the area which are often at or near ground level, we're a good 14 steps (8-9'?) below ground level. So I'm guessing that an indoor antenna facing our north window might get the Canadian stations to the north, but probably not the US stations to the south. But we could put an antenna about 6' high on some fencing of the back deck of the house, and this antenna would have good north and south facing views. This is relevant, because the Canadian channels we'd want to get are all a bit west of north and very close, and the American channels we'd want to get (especially KVOS) are about due south and not too far away. (TVFool report here.)

Antennas Direct has an offer through MeTV where we could get this antenna for only US$30. Would that be a good choice for this application? (I'm worried that just putting one on the north side of the house wouldn't get the southern US channels.) Or do you think something homemade would even do the trick?

You'd have to have it shipped to a US address for the MeTV deal, we aren't set up to ship to Canada.

We've got friends in Bellingham who receive stuff now and then for us when Canadian shipping isn't available, so that's no problem. Thanks!

$30 is about what it would cost you to buy everything you need to make a good antenna so from a price perspective it's a wash.

That assumes you don't have anything already on hand to make it from.

I agree, the $30 deal is very hard to pass on.

For a similar situation when only full retail pricing is available and you have an interest in building a DIY solution, the 9.5" whisker with 9" spacing M4 design is an easy build. No reflector needed in your application. http://m4antenna.eastmasonvilleweather.com/index.html

I'm not much of a handyman; trying to make my own would probably "cost" more than $30 worth of time and aggravation. :)

My big concern is the whole bi-directional thing. Would that Clearstream 1 pick up well from both north and south? Say I had the reflector on the north side of the antenna (to improve how well it catches the southern US signals); would it still do a good job of picking up those nice close northern Canadian signals?

Just leave the reflector screen off and it's then a bi-directional UHF antenna.

See page 2 of Tech Data Sheet (C1 loop is identical to Micron loop).
https://www.antennasdirect.com/cmss_...Micron-TDS.pdf