I built this antenna today 10-20-2013. Antenna works great. Inside my garage no channels were received. I set it outside on the ground , it picked up 14 channels with strong signal. I'll be mounting this on the end of the house at our bedroom. This antenna works as well as one I bought at wallmart recently for $95.00 We live 35 miles from Chattanooga. Thanks for the instructions.
When I was a kid in the early 60s we built antennas like this on a 1 by piece a wood to get UHF. We had a VHF TV with a UHF converter back then. We had two of these type antennas on an old ladder bolted to the house. One faced east west and the other north south to get everything in our area. There was equal lengths of ladder line 300 ohm tv wire going to each antenna. At the junction was the TV 300 ohm ladder line or open wire TV cable going into the house to the TV UHF converter box. Where it converted to VHF channel 3 to feed the old round screen Zenith TV set. Grandma loved L. Welk show and the music on there. And Grandpa would watch it with her. Grandpa later changed the antennas and put some chicken wire o the back side of a new set him and I built together. BTW my Grandpas first UHF TV antenna was a blown out 500 watt light bulb hooked to the 300 ohm wire and put in the attic to get channel 20 in Springfield Illinois. Thanks for the antenna design it made me remember many good times with my Grandpa. 73s Jimmy, WX9DX
I made this antenna and placed it behind the tv. I was using an RCA flat antenna mounted in a window that was 12 feet above the floor. I was getting pixelation even with an amplifier attached. I used the same type of RCA antenna in another room. In the second room I could only receive 5 channels. When I installed the first 4 bay antenna I did get 20 channels and occasionally have to turn the antenna to hold the signal. I have built 4 of these antennas now. The last one I modified by using 12 gauge wire and instead of connectors I made a hook at each end of the wire. This seems to make a solid connection than the post and wire antennas. I also soldered the transformer because of the difference in the gauge of the wire and the very thin wire from the transformer. I ran the scanning selection on the television and received solid 24 channels with no pixilation at all. I'm thrilled with the results. Thanks to your video I am able to sit down and turn the television on and watch a program without losing signal. Thank you.
I made this antenna and put it in my attic (I did not use a reflector). It picked up 90 channels, I'm 30 miles south of Atlanta. It's like Wow! It even picked up channels from 90 miles away. Prior to that I had an Ariel antenna (inside my office where the TV is located), which got about 26 channels, some were good, some were in and out. My wife were surprised of the new results. I tried the antenna on the splitter to all the other TV's in the house but the signal got noticeably weaker. I'm going to make 2 more antennas (to fix that) and get rid of DirecTv. That would save me 1,200.00 per year. I"ll use a couple Blu Ray Devices to get programs and movies from NetFlix for $8.88 per month.
I had an antenna that I paid $20 for and my channel scan revealed 0 channels. I used this plan with coat hangers, screws (couldn't find washers) and some scrap copper wire I had laying around and soldered all the joints and didn't bother attaching a reflector (yet) and I'm getting 6 channels with it leaning against the wall (didn't attached a stand yet) It works well and now I know that it might be worth investing in a good rooftop antenna or building a more sturdy one...thanks for the videos!
Thanks for the video. I just built one, put in the attic of my garage and connected to 4 TV's. all work well; got over 60 channels including LA channels from San Diego without utilizing any kind of "reflection." WOW!
@notvalidcharacters Very good point, I hadn't even thought of that, thanks for pointing it out! I was thinking purely in terms of unidirectional gain when I was building it (all of the transmitters I need to hit are clustered in one general direction) so it didn't even cross my mind to consider it without the reflector!
@FletcherHabit I am not positive, but I believe that as long as the material conducts electricity it should work. The reason I went out of my way to acquire metallic coat hangers instead of using the mass amounts of wire I already had on hand was that the wire was too flexible at the lengths I was cutting it here. The coat hanger core is quite a bit more rigid and so was more durable and less prone to lose it's shape.
Not a problem! To answer your question: All antennas, including this one, only care about one thing, the frequency/wavelength of the signal being broadcast. The antenna's job is only to "capture" the signal. It doesn't care what that signal is carrying. It could be an analog, digital, 1080p High Def, 480i...etc...it makes no difference to the antenna.
Nice instructional - I made my reflector using 1/2" hardware cloth - this is much stiffer and doesn't require any additional rods; might also be more effective as a reflector due to design. You can just ask for it at any hardware store they will know what it is. In Milwaukee, WI (about 10 miles away from city center) I get about 33 digital stations and 4 analog stations; of which about 10 are full time HDTV.
@jawmessenger An 8-bay is usually set up so that there are 2 columns of 4, situated side by side. The crossovers would be the same as for the 4-bay I built here, except that in the center, where the transformer is connected in the 4 bay, there would be another set of wires connecting the left column to the right (left wire of column 1 to left wire of column 2, rt. wire of column 1 to rt. wire of column 2) before they are connected to the transformer. So you'd end up with 4 crosses in the 8-bay.
Yes, the copper wire should work fine in place of coat hangers. I would, however, be wary of using it if it is overly flexible. The coathanger wire is pretty stiff and resists bending a lot better than straight copper wire, but that is your call since you know how and where you will be using it! Good luck!
this antenna works great I live in pa, lotta hills and valleys and went from 14 channels to 30. the only design mod I made was scraped the xformer , used stranded wire, and a regular coax connector. I alos changed the spacing between the bow ties to 7.5", 7.75" and 8" ended up with 4 more channels than the original design
Kenneth Jaworski the point of the transformer is because you're going from a 300 ohm balanced antenna to a 75 ohm unbalanced RG6 coaxial cable, but you could always jury-rig a transformer of your own with some coiled wire
Honestly I do no know enough about antenna design to say for sure! If you have them both in the same plane and pointed in the same direction the combination should result in increased gain, but I'm not sure if it would provide a tighter "sweet spot" or not. Someone else may be able to answer this better than I! Good luck though!
@stygma19 You can install them on either the narrow or wide side of the board. It should not effect the functionality of the antenna at all, as long as they are spaced and oriented the same way! Personally I just thought it looked more streamlined doing it on the narrow side, the decision was mostly for aesthetics. I didn't have any problems with the wood splitting either just FYI, predrilling the holes definitely helps with that! Best of luck if you are building one!
If your channel 11 is actually broadcasting on the channel 11 frequency band (some channels actually changed their true broadcast frequencies when the DTV switch occured) then this antenna should work, although not as powerfully as it will for the higher channels. The channel 11 in my area is broadcasting on true 11 and I pick it up relatively well from where I am. If in doubt you could cut the dipoles so that they're a little longer to start with that may help! Good luck!
I built several of these...one I mounted in an attic and connected it to the old cable splitter with cables going to four different TV's.......each TV has its own converter box and they all work great! BTW, receiving 25 channels..... location is 25 to 30 miles from stations. JB
Many thanks for this. I might have missed a point or two here - How critical are the vertical wire connectors' lengths? Plus, wouldn't a foil reflector at 0.2 or 0.25 wavelength spacing bring down the matching impedance to around 75 ohms and increase the gain considerably?
So to sum up, this antenna will work with DTV and HDTV (which is a flavor of DTV), as well as analog signals (as long as they are in the UHF...maybe very high VHF range). Note, however, that just because this antenna can capture those frequencies does not mean that the signals from your local stations will be strong enough at your excact location to be captured! The higher and less obstructions between the antenna and the broadcast towers the better the signal will be! Best of luck! Have fun!
This antenna is designed to capture the majority of the frequencies that HDTV is broadcast on, and so will pick up most of the HDTV channels available at your location. The frequency range that HDTV is broadcast on is part of the same range preveiously used by analog TV, and so this antenna will also capture many of the analog signals still around as well. HOWEVER, some of the lower numbered analog channels were broadcast on VHF frequencies which this antenna is NOT designed to capture.
@Scootchinman Multiple layers but spaced apart. Works the same as a Yagi, where only 1 of all those elements is actually driven (somewhere in the middle) --the elements behind it are all reflectors. I would think chicken wire is more "porous" than a solid sheet of metal-- the wave still has to go back through each layer. Ideally chicken wire set on some kind of plastic or wooden frame, This is all theory anyway, maybe overkill in practical terms. Carry on dude, peace out.
@bunny - Everything is the same... But you would hook both Antenna to a 2 in 1 Splitter. From there, you would have 1 Output... From there, you would run that Cable to your TV.
They are dipoles but they seem to be cut for one frequency. The 'dipoles' should be slightly shorter. This is because the band of television channels ranges in frequencies of 54 mHz to 890 mHz. Not all areas use all of these frequencies. The lower frequencies are used less often nowadays as the use of HDTV is more common. So the elements should be optimized for your area frequencies. This antenna is also called a bay antenna as the signals are captured as if waves are flowing into a bay.
Can you connect to a junction box for multiple TV's, where my old cable line comes into the house and goes of to the other TV's I'd mount in the attic and go from there.
@dojosdotcom - It's called " Splitting ". If you are using " any " Antenna for 2 or more TV. You will need an " Amplifier ". From your Amplifier, you will go to like 2-4 Splitter. From that, you can hook your TV's directly to your Splitter.
@dojosdotcom - NOTE: If you have " Weak " Signals from your Antenna, then you need a " Pre-Amplifier ". Here is the steps.... 1- From your Antenna, it goes into your " Pre-Amplifier ". 2- Connect your Cable to that and run down to your " Amplifier (Splitter) ". 3- From your " Amplifier ", you can connect ALL your TV's to it.
Hi there from NewZealand. I made a Bowtie antenna same as yours off another site, works great. we are inline of sign of the tv tower about 10 to 12 kms, maybe bit less. In NZ the south island, went completely uhf digital 28th of April this year. frequency range is 502 to 694mc/s. What UHF frequency range, does yours cover?. Or shall I shorten the legs to say 6 inches? Cheers Tom NewZealand
@Arthur Hau - Depends. Some People put plastic in the End of the V, so it looked like a Bow Tie, LOL. Plus he's using RU-vid " Title " so it can be searched in terms of Bow Tie Antenna :D
Do the hangers have to be secured along the edge of the board or can you attach them to the flat of it? It seems like it'd be less likely to split the wood that way, but I'm not sure if it would affect the functionality.
Hello, I want to make a 6-bow-tie antenna. Question: will the connecting wires between bow-ties cross over (each bow-tie) until the middle where the connection is made??? like this connecting wire example below: X X II X X
Could I mount this out side? We have a cable wire coming into the house that is not used. Could I hook this antenna up to the wire that comes into the house and distribute it all over the house?
***** Air Marksman Yes, you could certainly mount it outside! It should get even better reception that way actually. However, keep in mind that, being made of wood, it will deteriorate over time. If you wanted to permanently mount one outside, especially on a tower, I would suggest buying a pre-made metal one for the longevity of it. However, this will definitely work fine for a while!
DinoHunter56 I get as wide as broadcasted channels 3 to 42 with the same basic design they're all the same kind of signal, the only difference is how big the waves are
Your correct and so antenna element must be horizontal or vertical only no diagonal orientation and also boom or elements must be insulated, avoid using wood pls.
Hi, you never actually specified if there should be a correct distance between the tips. Or based on what I can see here and the 7" spacing at the mounting point of each anchor, should one be trying to replicate the triangles in the middle of each hanger with the one adjacent to it. The reason I ask is that having built a crude version of this from another plan that required the hangers to be bent to obtain a 3" inch gap at the end and therefore having a much larger space between it and the next hanger, I was obtaining around 15-20 channels. Since bending those same hangers to somewhat replicate your model, I now get anywhere from 28-42 channels! Is there a sweet spot when it comes to this?
Quick question, I understand things might vary but in my area the lowest channel I was interested in receiving was channel 11. What were some of the lowest channels you received with yours? I am trying to determine if channel 11 is low enough to require a dedicated VHF antenna. Cheers!
White zip ties do not hold up to ultra violet rays from the sun. If each side was wired in common, why didn't you just screw down the spade connector of the coax transformer under one of the antenna hold down screws?
I thought this looked decent with potential but I had a problem at the chicken wire "reflector". I don't see chicken wire as being a very good reflector at all as there is very little reflection surface. I also would say the frequency range is limited. Also, there should be zero difference in DTV and HDTV when it comes to the antenna. The difference between the 2 is the data (hence digital) and not the frequency/wavelength the antenna is designed to pick up. However, the higher the frequency the more data that pushed although. Some areas have up to 7 (H)DTV channels on what used to be only 1 analog channel. For whatever reason I'm having issues with picking up any DTV so I am browsing the homemade DTV antennas. Doubt it will help me much as I'm sort of in a valley. I know a homemade antenna will work better as I have rabbitears right now that don't really pick up anything but I tin-foiled them and now I can pick up 20+ but not reliably. So I'm trying to find a temporary cheap option to increase the amount of channels I can get but more importantly make them reliable.
@Rizwan khan - If Roof Top, you need to make it Plastic + Metal Pole. Also, due to Wind, you need either fencing or chicken wire since it has holes.... So you can use it as " Deflector ". NOTE: I heard People using these Antennas in other Countries too, it actually worked for them too and as far as 100+ KM
I live in the valley and the rabbit ear antenna barely gets reception i just want to know if i use copper wire and fold it like a coat hanger will it work
@notvalidcharacters Do you mean multiple layers of chicken wire? If so, I do not believe this would accomplish much in terms of gain. At best you would gain a bit more directionality and it may help to cut out a slight amount of RF noise from other sources, but I do not believe it would be noticable. If you wanted to give it a try however, a flat piece of sheet metal or even tin/aluminum foil may be easier to work with than layering the chicken wire! That stuff is feisty!
Just to be picky here-- the antenna already is directional before the reflector-- it's bidirectional broadside to the elements. Adding the reflector makes it more unidirectional. But without the reflector it's still directional. You
Plastic should work fine. As long as it is non-conductive it should not cause any problems. If your wire run is really long or you are planning on splitting the signal off to multiple TVs you could use the amplifier, however it won't really give you better reception, just better signal from the antenna to the tv(s). I'm not sure which part you wish to use copper wire in place of. You might be able to use coper wire for the elements, however I would only use solid wire. The elements need to be as straight as possible and stranded wire would bend way too much. If you wanted to use copper wire to connect the elements/dipoles that would work fine.
soild copper (ground type) is the preferred way to go, but the costliest, next costliest is aluminum then all the way down to plain old wire hangers for your shirts. (no paint on it though, (no clearcoat and no plastic coating on the wire).
Yes, you can, but if it's outside the wind will rip it all off. Use a copper rod as a reflector and make this 5% longer then the driven element of dipoles.
he explained what the reflector does. It reduces interference by interrupting waves originating on the deflector side, preventing them from reaching the antenna array at full strength. Like a mega-phone, or when you cup hands around your mouth to shout further, it helps to isolate your vocal waves from cross-sounds by focusing them. Chicken-wire is well suited for this purpose because the comb-design mimics a panel of a 'Faraday Cage'
@Surya Pakpahan - As long the Country is using VHF or UHF = YES.... 100% - NOTE: I've heard People using these Antennas in other Countries too, it actually worked for them too and as far as 100+ KM - NOTE 2: for VHF - You would need 2x 14-1/2" Rods up top in order to get those Signals.
The only important aspect of the reflector is that it eclipses the antenna. This is important especially in fringe areas where you want to shield out transmitters from opposing cities or reflections off mountains. If you are close to a city then the reflector probably won't make much difference in signal. This type of antenna is a bit overkill in a city.
Reminds me of one I built 57 years ago when I was 16. Yeah, you can slap something together and get some channels. A paperclip stuck in the back of a tv can tune in a station or 2. TV stations transmit SPECIFIC FREQUENCIES. To properly receive frequencies over distances, the antenna must be cut and assembled to specific measurements/spacing/materials. It must be "tuned" just as the TV is tuned. . Just "looking kinda something like" an antenna is not good enough. Also, "I got 14 channels" does not prove anything. A properly designed and built antenna could receive three times as many stations because it is more sensitive. Next time, comply with some specifications.
Sorry it didn't work for you :-( If you are very far out in the country or there are lots of obsructions in between your place and the transmission towers it might not be possible to get any more channels unless you elevated the antenna on a tower.
Hang on to those pliers!. They are old and made of real metal. Are they your Dads? :) Funny, I noticed yo cut the metal with bolt cutters. When we got a Rescue Jaws Of Life in our Fire Dept, we cut a piece of rebar. We left about a foot of rebar, 1/2 " thick, on the end. When the blades went through it shot the metal across the street, we figured a hundred miles an hour and stuck in a ladies new car door... haha
This guy LOL, good antenna, but what is inside a mirror DOH of cores a mirror will reflect RF , just look at the scopes and big dishes owned by NASA and the government, and you can keep your chickens safe with that one
