Astro TV antennas

[Adam]

This has to be one of my stranger finds. It's an antenna, which looks like it's just made of two aluminum plates ... stuffed inside the figure of a red basset hound Check out the scans I made of the brochure and instructions that came with it. Apparently there was 8 different versions: 5 dogs, 2 cats, and a beaver - each available in several different colors. There's no date on any of the materials I have, but by look of the tv on the brochure and the fact that they mention color, I'd put these in the late-50s.

[David Roper]

Darn, no penguin?

[Adam]

Here's scans of the box. I haven't actually tried this yet. I'm not really expecting to pull in distant stations with this, but it for my purposes - to pick up the signal from my modulator a few feet away, it might be great.

[Tom Albrecht]

This was clearly designed by someone more interested in the cuteness of the animal than in actually supplying an antenna that works. Some quotes I find a bit entertaining from the brochure:

"Outperforms all others" - quite possibly it does, as long as you're thinking of all other indoor TV antennas that look like a red dog.

"Improves reception of high frequency signals of the standard frequency modulation broadcast of black and white as well as color television broadcasts" - Hmmm... given that the video part of a TV signal was VSB AM, and not FM, maybe this could be used as an excuse why it didn't work very well...("I guess you just don't have standard FM TV!") And it gives you some insight into just how much technical horsepower there was in the company that produced this!

"Eliminates all mixed signals and multipath distortions" - Betcha it doesn't!!!

On the supplemental typewritten instruction sheet, I love this part:

"If you can't get a good picture, now move the pet around slowly... Now slowly move pet back to top of the set. At this point, antenna has been matched to tuner in your set." - Ya really think so? Then why is the picture no better than it was before?

I bet this thing was sold by mail only, so it would be a bit of trouble and expense to actually return it after trying it out!

[old_coot88]

It's of sorta the same genre as those gizmos that plugged into an AC outlet to "make your house wiring into a giant antenna".

[Eric H]

Originally Posted by Tom Albrecht

"Eliminates all mixed signals and multipath distortions" - Betcha it doesn't!!!

It probably does this by eliminating ALL the signals.

[Electronic M]

You can make guesses about the preformance all day long, but if you just read the package you would know that "It works" (probably needs to have a "By jove" in fornt of that pitch though).

Tom C.

[jr_tech]

Likely somewhat ok in strong signal areas with no multipath, kinda cute, would be fun to try to collect them all!
jr

[Jeffhs]

These antennas may have worked well enough in strong signal areas for analog TV, but I have a feeling they would probably be next to useless today for DTV. Given the all-or-nothing nature of digital television, I would be surprised if it works at all. These antennas, as another person mentioned here, sold so well not necessarily or in fact because of how they worked (or not), but because of their cute plastic casings. I remember reading in an electronics magazine (the now defunct Electronics Illustrated) years ago, in a review of the small analog TV antennas in plastic cases available in those days (late '60s-early seventies), that it was actually the plastic cases with their pretty designs that brought in the money (many times over $10) these antennas sold for. "Too bad the guts cannot bring in the signal," the article stated. Some of these antennas were worse than useless anyway because, again according to the article, several turns of antenna wire in the bases of the things were dead shorted, meaning that in many cases these gutless wonders were little more than short circuits directly across the TV's antenna terminals.

I never had a TV antenna that plugs into a wall outlet, and I wouldn't have wanted one. These were supposed to turn your home's entire AC wiring system into a giant television antenna; in very strong signal areas they may have worked for analog (I would not dream of using one of these for DTV), but anywhere else they probably worked poorly or not at all. Another problem that could have occurred was that the small capacitor(s) that isolated the antenna twin lead to the TV from the power line could short, thereby putting the entire line voltage across the TV's antenna terminals and causing a fire -- to say nothing of seriously damaging or destroying the set's antenna input circuits or even the tuner itself.

[bandersen]

Awesome! I didn't know the dog came in brown - mine is black. I never saw the instructions before, but I do have a beat up box like yours.
It's taken me years and some luck to find these 4

Astro Animal Antennas

[Phil Nelson]

I have two of those flocked animals, the dog and the Siamese cat. They work fine with my in-house transmitter (aka B-T agile modulator) and are more fun to look at than the junky thrift-store antennas I formerly used.

I haven't torn one apart to see what's inside. I assume something like a coil of glorified tinfoil. These were cheap novelties, not serious DXing gear

Phil Nelson

[Adam]

Well, it works just fine picking up my B-T agile modulator from the living room into the bedroom. I didn't test it further. So out of the 8 animals offered, no one's ever found the 3 of the dogs and one of the cats. I wonder if there even are any examples of those still around.

[jr_tech]

For audio DXing of video carriers (mostly channel 2) during E-skip conditions, I prefer the "active" version of the cat antenna.




jr

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by David Roper

Darn, no penguin[/URL]?

"If it laid an egg, it would fall down behind the telly"
"They don't stamp animals 'property of the zoo', they wouldn't stay still"
"It's time for the penguin on your telly to explode"...

[Dan Starnes]

I had forgotten about those until this thread. Very cool!