A site about the radio listening hobby and my activities therein - longwave, mediumwave, shortwave, FM, and television DXing. A site about the radio listening hobby in all its forms, or at least the forms that interest me.

I am also a licenced amateur radio operator, callsign VE3LXL. Information about my amateur radio station is found on my station website.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Build Your Own TV Antenna

A few posts back I mentioned that I got a converter to enable me to watch over-the-air digital TV. The other piece of gear one needs for watching over-the-air television is a TV antenna, and the one I already had is not very good. It's one of those "UFO" style omnidirectional VHF and UHF jobs and it worked but not quite as well as I'd like.

Coincidentally I happened to find a video on Make TV about how to make your own TV antenna out of scrap wood and cut-up clothes hangers. It's a DB4 "bowtie" antenna with four "bowties" that's cut for UHF.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/01/maker_workshop_dtv_antenna_steadyca.html

I built this and it really does work. I bolted it to a pole and set it out on my 12th floor apartment balcony, and it is providing noticeably better reception than the antenna I had out there already. Including on VHF, which is a surprise.

The results? I've gotten every local Toronto digital TV station, of course. I've also received every digital station from Buffalo, NY. And most of the Rochester, NY stations. Analog channels are also coming in much better. It works much better than I expected it would. And it's made out of clothes hangers. Cool!

Here's another site with plans for the same antenna:

http://www.tvantennaplans.com/

I also added some splitters and hooked this antenna up to the FM receiver on my stereo, which has improved reception on that thing considerably. And the antenna isn't even cut for the FM band. (This is temporary - I'm going to buy, or make, an FM antenna soon).

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