As I mentioned in a post somewhere above, I recently helped a friend build a Gray-Hoverman according to the new design. My friend has been using a Yagi he made out of a broomstick, copper pipes from a refrigerator, and one of those antenna-to-coax adapters.

So, we "borrowed" a cable signal tester from work and did a little antenna shoot-out. You know, like ya would.

Surprisingly, although my friend built his Yagi specifically for one frequency (since we only get one HD channel OTA), the Yagi outperforms the Hoverman on many other frequencies in addition to beating it by 25% on that one! I should mention that the Hoverman uses coat hangers for the conductive material, which may be hurting it when compared to the Yagi's proper copper piping. Also, my TV reports a 90% signal strength (whatever that means) on the one HD channel for the Hoverman, as opposed to 98% for the Yagi. And being digital, since both are good enough to get the MPEG-2 through, that means the same quality picture.

Below are some stats for various channels (the one HD channel we get is on the same frequency as 24) showing signal strength in dB, and Carrier-to-noise ratio. The cable tester we used wouldn't show the exact C/N below 30, so that's why there are a bunch of "<30"s in there. Can't seem to make it line up properly either, sorry!

Hoverman
========

ch dB C/N
--- ----- ----
4 6 <30
13 2 48
22 -19 <30
24 6 52
25 -11 <30
40 -9 40

Yagi
====

ch dB C/N
--- ----- ----
4 19.8 31.8
13 -2 47
22 -20 <30
24 7.5 52
25 -9 <30
40 -25 <30