After looking into ways to improve my cheap OTA TV antenna reception, I took a little time this past weekend to design and 3D print this little adapter that allows a cheap flat OTA TV antenna to be mounted in place of the original cone of an unused DirecTV satellite dish. We’ve had this old DirecTV dish just sitting up above our garage doing nothing for the past few years since we moved into this place… so I attached a cheap antenna using this custom adapter, pointed the dish towards the nearest towers, and BAM! Lots more free TV channels and much more reliable signal on the channels that I want to see the most!
While this is just my first prototype, I am thinking about eventually adding features to help keep the antenna a little more securely attached to the 3D printed part. For now though, I will probably leave it up to see how long it takes before the wind dislodges the antenna from the printed adapter.
UPDATE
After trying a few different positions for the dish, I found that a horizontal tilt was providing the best signal, but this allowed the antenna to more easily fall out of the original adapter design. So I spent a little more time updating the design to more securely keep the antenna in place.
I also took a few more photos so you can see how the antenna is fitted into the adapter.