[Alan Douglas]

These work well and you'll have a lot of fun with it. A new 30 might have too much gain anyhow. With a decent antenna (height is more important than length) and a ground, it ought to pull in forty or fifty stations. It would get more, but won't tune to the upper end of the modern broadcast band.

Timing is everything. A similar thing happened to me at the MIT Flea Market a couple of years ago. One vendor was just setting up and had a Dell 19' flat-screen monitor on his table. I figured he'd want a fair amount for it (it was about a $500 monitor at the time) and I don't like to ask prices on everything just to find out, but the guy ahead of me asked and was quoted $40. He then wanted to know if it had any dead pixels. The vendor got into a huff and said for that price he didn't know or care. Luckily the guy left and I immediately pounced on it.

Turned out the reason it was so cheap, is that it didn't have its power-supply brick. The vendor had three monitors but only two bricks. But he said he had tried it and it worked properly. I had a power supply, just needed mounting in a box with a switch. I'm using it right now.