Repairing an old Rooftop Antenna

[Electronic M]

The 300 to 75 ohm outdoor baluns are still made and obtainable. IIRC they're available on Amazon.

The antenna is still usable if the rods are all still present and either not bent or able to be straightened, the insulators aren't ruined and or conductive, and you verify and or fix any issues with the jumpers between rods getting corroded and not having good continuity at connection points to the rods and balun.

You can't really stop lightening from going places...You can install a lightening arrestor for TV antennas to encourage it to take a different path to ground than your TV ant, but that still doesn't guarantee anything. I know people who install outdoor TV antennas in their attics to prevent lightening, and antenna damage.
Rotors are still made....IIRC they're more of a ham radio thing, but you should be able to get a new rotor and control box. Some of the old control boxes were proprietary to their rotors so don't use a mismatched set without doing research.

[vortalexfan]

Thanks for the information!

I was looking through ebay and there is listed on there a NOS Alliance 'Tenna Rotor Model U100 that has everything there in the box including the control box, the rotor assembly, the instructions, and all the mounting hardware for $150 BIN, would that be something worth looking into? I would definitely like a vintage unit to kind of go with the vintage feel of the house, but also because I really wouldn't trust any of the modern rotors to last very long (and also they looked really complicated to operate.)

Also I'm going to assume that you can get the outdoor antenna 300 ohm to 75 Ohm adaptors at places like lowes or menards too besides amazon?

Sorry for all of the questions but this is the first time I've ever dealt with an outdoor antenna like this, so I want to make sure I'm doing this correctly.

Now, my grandparents lived in an old farm house that was built by my grandmother's grandfather in 1920, and my grandparents had a large antenna tower outside their farmhouse that they had hooked up to their TV and my dad told me that they were able to pick up WGN Channel 9 out of Chicago on their TV when he was growing up back in the 1970s and they lived in Culver, Indiana out in the middle of nowhere.

Would it be possible to pick up WGN out of Chicago using a rooftop antenna that is properly setup these days or is the days of DX'ing TV stations a thing of the past?

Just Curious.

[zeno]

First get the balun from a safe source like Wineguard or Channel Master.
MANY of them will not pass UHF, They cut off abt 500 MHZ.
Rotor is necessary especially on a big antenna & HDTV. Alliance & CM
are good. CM is quiet & the U100 clicks loudly. If guyed mount up high
if not a few ft above roof.
You can put lightning arresters on BUT almost all hits are on power lines
not the antenna.
When you put on the balun cut back the coax & be sure its clean & shinny.
Most of the antenna parts are riveted. Great place for corrosion & no
easy fix.

73 Zeno
LFOD !