Convert car antenna connector to standard coax?

**enigma9o7** · 08-27-2007, 10:33 PM

I believe what I want is male Motorola to male coax. I've looked around and can't find anything like that. Anyone got any ideas?

I want to figure out how to hook up my car antenna to an hdtv tuner on a carpc. I know I won't get great reception, but I still wanna try it, maybe I'll at least get a couple channels, there's tonz of hdtv around here I get fine at home with rabbit ears. I used to have a cheap ebay deck, pyle pldintv7, with a built in ntsc tv tuner. It just used the same antenna as fm radio, and I could get a few channels pretty clear and the rest fuzzy. So to me it's worth a shot.

What would be even better would be a splitter, where one was out was coax and one still the motorola, but that's dreaming. I can probably manage to find a regular motorola m splitter (i hope!!!) that I could use before the converter to coax.

**Wiredwrx** · 08-27-2007, 10:47 PM

Originally Posted by enigma9o7

I believe what I want is male Motorola to male coax. I've looked around and can't find anything like that. Anyone got any ideas?

I want to figure out how to hook up my car antenna to an hdtv tuner on a carpc. I know I won't get great reception, but I still wanna try it, maybe I'll at least get a couple channels, there's tonz of hdtv around here I get fine at home with rabbit ears. I used to have a cheap ebay deck, pyle pldintv7, with a built in ntsc tv tuner. It just used the same antenna as fm radio, and I could get a few channels pretty clear and the rest fuzzy. So to me it's worth a shot.

What would be even better would be a splitter, where one was out was coax and one still the motorola, but that's dreaming. I can probably manage to find a regular motorola m splitter (i hope!!!) that I could use before the converter to coax.

There is no such thing as a "MALE COAX" Coax is a type of cable, with at least a center conductor, a dialectric, a braid, and then an insulator. You could always cut off the Motorola plug and attach the appropriate connector. You could probably "Y" the cable, not sure how effective that will be, I have never tried it, and for a transmitter that will not work with out some other things like duplexer/isolators etc....

Michael

**durwood** · 08-28-2007, 07:44 AM

Buy a "y antenna adapter" from bestbuy, circuit city and the proper connector you need to put on the other end (best buy, circuit city,home depot, lowes, radioshack, etc) and try it out. I will be surprised if it works. Car antennas are a made a certain length which is optimized to capture the frequency band of AM and FM, not neccessarily TV signals, plus you are in a moving vehicle and it does not "locl" onto the signal liek car radios do to radio frequencies. However, it should only cost you a few bucks in parts to try out.

**paragraph** · 08-28-2007, 11:24 AM

beat me to it

This is almost certain to fail. FM antennae are designed to pick up RF between (roughly) 80mhz to 110mhz. Broadcast TV (VHF, UHF, etc) occupy between 50mhz and 80mhz and 110mhz and above (to something like 600mhz).

The strength of the antenna in question is probably to weak to pick up a usable signal, if it can even do it.

http://www.affordablehdtv.com/winega...3.html?ref=100

That would be your best bet, but omni directional HD antennae tend to suck, and that will look like *** on your car... but it should work a bit.

**pancit175** · 08-29-2007, 05:54 PM

Originally Posted by durwood

Buy a "y antenna adapter" from bestbuy, circuit city and the proper connector you need to put on the other end (best buy, circuit city,home depot, lowes, radioshack, etc) and try it out.

I dont think they make a "Y" antenna adapter. You may just be forced to make one. It's not all that hard any way. just make sure that the center wire does not come in contact with the ground shielding and solder away.

**dblair** · 08-30-2007, 12:41 AM

I get TV reception using my regular am/fm factory car antenna. I just cut off the existing connector and put on my own RG-59 connector. In my case, the TV reception is no worse than it would be with rabbit ears. Of course, the reception is much worse when the vehicle is moving, but that is due to the tuner, not the antenna.

**Abmolech** · 08-30-2007, 01:11 AM

You must maintain 75 ohm impedance, (or above) or you will attenuate the signal.

If your going to do this, make sure you use genuine 75 ohm cable and MORE importantly, 75 ohm terminators.

Be careful most are not 75 ohm terminators, to maintain the impedance, the distance from the signal (centre pin) to the ground signal reference (woven outside) is critical. IE it must be coaxial (central)

You could be really silly and use twisted pair, and prove once and for all, they suck at noise rejection.

Or some of the expensive "audio" cables, and prove they cant beat coaxial either.. Just a thought.

I recommend canare terminators, and just about any RG60 cable. (1.50 per metre)

**enigma9o7** · 08-30-2007, 12:45 PM

Ok. As I said, I don't expect good, but considering I did get a few analog channels just fine with the same antenna on my previous deck, I think it's worth trying, I may get a channel or two or three. I wouldn't use it when the vehicle is moving anyway, the only time I ever used the tv on my old deck was ocassionally when I was parked waiting to pick someone up/meet them, etc.

Anyways thanks for the info. I did find something online at a cb antenna shop that did the car antenna (motorola) to a UHF connector, but it was 50 ohm... and UHF I guess is bigger than VHF.. so making it myself is probably the way do go. I bought a crimping tool and connectors for the regular vhf connector (including RG59), so basically if I understand you guys right, it should work if I just get a short car antenna extension cable (or splitter if I can find one), cut off the male end, and crimp the RG59 connector onto that.

**enigma9o7** · 09-03-2007, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by dblair

I just cut off the existing connector and put on my own RG-59 connector.

So I just tried this on an antenna cable. The problem is the RG59 connectors I bought only have the outside... they don't have the center pin, I guess it expects that to be in the cable I guess... but it isn't in this type of cable.

I guess I need to find a different type connector that includes the center pin too, with a way to solder onto the backside of it..

**dblair** · 09-04-2007, 01:20 AM

Sorry, I kind of forgot exactly how I did it (it was quite a long time ago). Actually, the center (signal) wire is there in the car antenna cable, but it's way too thin and limp to be usable with the F connector...I remember now that I had the same problem when I first tried this. When I think about it, I'm pretty sure what I ended up doing was I just spliced a section of coax tv cable to the car antenna cable. I just cut, stripped and soldered the center signal wires from the two pieces of cable together and same for the ground/shielding from the two cables together.