Nice job BUT find a way separate the two main wires all the way down. Maybe cut the metal in the middle of each of the four bow ties.
Please write back with your findings.
Thanks
To answer you and jorgek:
The main wires were and are separated. Sorry, if my 9-th photo somehow misled you. I had 2-sided PCB, but took care to remove some copper foil on BOTH sides, using small grinder, was too lazy to remove all, that,s how the reminder is visible on the photo.
But your questions gave me some hint : What, IF I left the copper foil on one of these plates?
So, I tried to imitate this situation, and the results are puzzling :
Soldering a piece of wire on the bottom of antenna (basically, bridging it, or, shorting) did not cause any signal strength drop.
Nice to have soldering gun handy and do some changes "on the fly" without even switching off TV.
I expected that, after shorting out the "rails", the TV reception would be lost, so, prepared longer piece of wire for making inductive coil (wrapping the wire on a pencil) and bridging the rails with such coil.
It was not needed, as the short bridge did not hinder reception.
The best signal strength (5 of 5) was after disconnecting the rails from the 2 bottom "V" probes (so only 3 pairs of probes worked).
Finally, I re-soldered the rails as they should be - with top and bottom probes reversed. Signal was still 5 of 5, with bridging wire joining the rails.
Other TV programs (with stronger transmitters) were 5 of 5 all the time.
I agree with DVB-S2 statement that my TV's signal indicator is imprecise, using only 5 steps.
A few pictures follow
