Lucy Puts Up a TV Antenna...
 

First aired, 26 November 1962. Antenna? Wineguard?..

I never saw a Winegard like that!
BTW, where's the transmission line? :scratch2:

I have seen a Winegard like that, the Powertron P-55 or without the amp, Colortron C-42. My grandma got one out up after the 1971 Chromacolor was delivered. The model was made for decades as a workhorse where 3 or more VHF channels in the same direction made a broadband VHF necessary.

In most areas from 30 out to 55 miles, this antenna with a 5-foot boom tended to perform as well fringe-rated log-periodics twice that size and compared without the amp! JFD, Jerrold and Channel Master did not have a smaller budget model that would work like that in a standard fringe location. Of course, if directivity and ghost rejection was criteria, the biggest antenna is the best.

In the 80s and 90s, the VHF-UHF chromstar line was a huge seller but a variation of this little wonder was still available in "TV man" line and I have one of those. Gone are the "W"s punched out in the rear driven element bracket you see.

That was 1962 and what I like about your pictures is the three-phase high tension lines and cross-arms look awful close, probably to embellish the folly of Lucy on a roof, though its clearly on a movie set
Attachment 197538

A couple antenna pictures here, I took just the other day. Each antenna, I have seen for many, many years, but finally took the time to take pictures, especially since the tower on top of the Sears store, which closed a few years ago, who knows when all will be torn down. I'm always looking for classic antennas! I wish I had one, like the folded dipole with reflector, which looks like it's mounted on the power pole, but actually next to it.

Lol, I have that UHF antenna thats in that radio shack ad for 15.95
I was playing around with it in 2005-06 trying to recieve analog UHF, this was my millionth attempt at having UHF at home.
I could get a few stations one really clear a few miles away at a roadside lookout with a pocket tv, but I never did pick anything up at home.
To many mountains and trees where I live and they completely kill UHF signals.
God I sure miss analog....

Anyone remember these cheezy peices of crap?
Seems like everwhere I went someone had one stuffed in the closet amongst a bunch of junk. Circa 1995 every garage sale had one.
The two controls consisted of a dish rotator , and a tuning control which all it did was cut off one of connections to the rabbit ears .
The important looking plastic things on the dipoles were just that, important hollow plastic shells.
Rabbit ears in sheeps clothing, Sucker bait at it's finest....?
https://playingintheworldgame.files....rtisement1.jpg

This one sold at the WARCI donation auction for I think $2 or $3 in July.

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1564949011

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I think the Archers actually had a rf amp in them if I recall...

Yes, this one did. https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/radio_...preme_v_5.html

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"Dish" was an outrageous design using a dipole for UHF, stoking a delusion among the band-illiterate. Only good in Metro areas and I bet it was not patented either.

"Archer" Antenna: The plastic things on the VHF dipoles were so that you could adjust them without making electrical contact and skewing results of aiming-spreading. The one knob rotated both loop and monopoles, other knob performed the "hocus-pocus" of impedance-matching combinations.

The plastic ring on the UHF loop added a director and reflector element that was just chromed plastic. I never did understand why a bowtie and reflector was not used on these set-tops instead. Loops had one advantage, not limited to horizontal polarization. The best set-top UHF antenna I ever used was that RS $4.99 set-top two-bay bowtie.

These may have been the last of the indoor antennas that used a switch to alter connections between the elements and have separate UHF and VHF leads.

In the early days of digital, the Radio Shack dual bowtie was one of the best non-amplified indoor UHF antennas we tried at Zenith. The other was the "Silver Sensor" log-periodic.

I've one of those "dish" jobs on my Motorola in the bedroom, using 90s-00s era rabbit ears for the CTC21 and BT modulator, and a standard Philips branded VHF/UHF combo yagi I bought for $25 back in '06. I took it with me when I moved out of my parents in '08. It beats anything you can buy at a big box store for DTV reception. A local hardware store still has the same one (though RCA branded) and they want over $100 for it! I'm only 35 mile outside ABQ, bit we have always needed good outdoor antennas for decent reception.

My great grandparents in Douglas, AZ had a big tower for my great grandpa's HF rig, but also mounted a really big Winegard aimed at Tucson up there. Next time I go down, I'll see if its still there and take pictures.