Make:

A few months ago I made the one in the much older and basically similar youtube video (found easily by typing "hdtv antenna" into youtube).

It does really work very well. Far better than the $45 powered antenna from Radioshack.

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Posted by: John Park on January 26, 2009 at 9:23 AM

Carl, that's great, thanks for the comment. How many over-the-air channels are you able to pull in?

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I've seen plenty of these videos floating around, with mostly good comments, but I have a question about the wire hangers. I can't seem to find any flexible metal (wire) hangers in the $.99 stores around me, and seeing as how I can't get the wire hangers, do you think that a wire like this (link: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2036274) would be sufficient, or would it be too heavy/hard to manipulate and cut? Also, would this wire work as an antenna or is it in someway ineffective at carrying the signals? Thanks for the help.

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http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2036274

Sorry, I just noticed it took the ) as part of the link. Thanks for the help.

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You can use small peices of automotive vacuum hose on the sharp tips to protect from injury.

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I'm in a rural area, and my signal needs all the help it can get, so I'd like to put the antenna outside, if possible. It seems to me that the only component that might be hurt by the weather would be the transformer. Is it important that this be right at the antenna, or could the antenna be placed outside and the transformer inside by the TV? If so, what's the longest you'd want to run a line from antenna to TV?

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I have been bothered by the bad reception with my rabbit ears for a while. I refuse to play the $70 outdoor antenna in electronic stores. So, I saw this post last night and made it in a couple of hours: the reception is awesome! every single channel is good just by laying the antenna around the front door.

the transformer in radio shack is rather expensive. $8.12 with tax, but that's the only thing i paid and it works much better than the $20 rabbit ears I bought.

Kudos for these instructions! very easy to find material and very easy to follow. I used 2x4 construction lumber instead, and I used 1/4" nuts and bolts with two washers. works perfectly.

thanks!

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Should be no problem to put the transformer a ways away from the antenna - just get some 300 ohm twin lead cable from you local RadioShack, and attach it to the antenna where you would attach the transformer, and connect the transformer to the other end of the twin lead - I don't know how far you can go; at this point it's a digital signal encoded in analog, so the signal quality will degrade somewhat the longer you go. Just mess with it until you get a satisfactory signal.

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what the heck is a "75 to 300 ohm matching transformer"?

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Posted by: Make: television on January 30, 2009 at 7:43 AM

@waldo, the transformer is where your cable hooks into the DTV antenna. To get a better idea of what specifically a 75-300 ohm matching transformer looks like, do a search for one at Google, Amazon, Radioshack.com, etc...

Here are a couple links I found after performing a quick search on Google just now:
http://www.amazon.com/75-300-Ohm-Matching-Transformer/dp/B0002ZPIOG
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062049

Either one of those links are helpful because they clearly picture the transformer so you can see the spade connectors at one end and the female connector at the other.

Hope that helps!

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Our home-made antenna is working better than the Radio Shack omni-directional antenna with remote. I'd guess the signal is 40-60% better for all of our local channels. That puts us in the good to very good category of reception. We made a few modifications:

use 1" fender washers - they have a large surface area and a small center hole.

we used sheet metal screws which have a flat bottom edge. The wood screws are beveled and tended to teeter.

The transformer we bought at radio shack turned out to be male/male which would not connect to the coax cable. We had to buy a female/female coupler to get things right. A right angle f/f coupler would have been better than the straight one we bought.

We may spring $16 for a signal booster from Radio Shack. We'll wait to do this until the conversion date has passed.

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The text should have read

"The transformer we bought at radio shack turned out to be female/female which would not connect to the coax cable. We had to buy a male/male coupler to get things right. A right angle m/m coupler would have been better than the straight one we bought."

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This turned out to be a great project. I'm receiving all the local stations without issue. I left off the metal pipe opting to mount the antenna to the attic trusses directly.

Thanks for the how-to.

Pics: http://www.midnightcheese.com/2009/02/dtv-antenna-success/

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it actually works, its my first project and it did not look the one that guy made but its a little off but it works im happy.

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Built antenna, works great, decided to build dual array similar to a DB8 using an old metal shelving unit, it also works great. Was wondering if galvanized wiring available from hardware stores would be a good substitute for coat hangars? Also, since I would like to roof mount the antenna, if I use paint to weatherproof it would this somehow affect reception?

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Hi,

Just wanted to thank you for this project; never saw the video but downloaded the printed guide from the web, and used a collection of those shirt hangers that come from the dry cleaners'.

In an area of south San Jose, CA known for bad analog signals, this antenna mounted in my garage with a cable to the living room pulls in 27 channels using an Apex digital-to-analog converter.

Thanks for a useful guide!

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I didn't have enough coat hangers to spare so I used some speaker wire. I did use a soldering iron to tin the ends so they would not unravel.

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I had some extra 12g romex wire and used that instead of the wire hangers.

I've also installed this outside, just outside my gable vent and gained 3 stations!

If it ever falls apart in the elements I'll remake it with a thicker gauge wire.

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I work in an auto shop, and everyone wears uniforms. The uniform company delivers a new set every week, and they come on hangars. Nice metal hangars, which pile up on a rack which gets emptied every few weeks. I'm sure the local shop would be happy to give you a pile.

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I used romex 14ga. house wire. Cut lengths 20" for 2 frame wires, and 14" for the 8 "Vs". Pull the 3 wires (black, white and ground)from their insulation. Strip the insulation and save 2 small 1" pieces to put back on frame wires where they cross. Left out the washers and soldered connections to insure contact. Made tight loop around screws at ends of frame wires with needle nose pliers and made everything tight. Works great during the day but PBS channels screw up occasionally at night. Clearwater PBS signal varies vastly when they are messing with it now. Last night the voice was not syncronized with the mouth on Charlie Rose after the strength came back strong. Our stations are not waiting until June 12 and I don't think the fault is the antenna. I have been experimenting with antennas since May 2008 using hangers and copper wire connecting with the Balun Transformers and the tiny black box 75-300 2 screw connection and antennas or all shapes connected directly to my Digital Stream DXT9950 which controls everything except sleep timer which I have to set on both the converter and the TV remotes. Otherwise after setting each TV to match the converter, I can control EVERYTHING from the converter remote. Of the 92 different converters, I thing I've got the best.
Question??? Are the 7" "Vs" and the 5 3/4 lengts critical for the construction...and cann the insulation be left on except where connections are made???

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An antenna is an antenna. VHF antennas works best for VHF, and UHF antennas works best for UHF, but there's no such thing as analog or digital antennas.

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Posted by: Geotrick on February 17, 2009 at 10:30 PM

You can find out what stations are available in your area by going to antennaweb.org. I am able to receive almost all stations in my area to 40 miles. Stations in the 20 mile range receive a solid signal 75% or better, with stations in the 30 to 40 mile range receiving 40~65% (and better at night). I will have to say that it didn't do better than my RCA dual band flat antenna (ant1500, it gets 32 stations.). But for less than a half hours work thats pretty good! The station that has the Make show comes in clear with the RCA and scattered with homebrew.

Thanks John! now on to the wind generator!

note if you don't have a transformer why not cut the end off a coax cable and strip it back enough to get enough braided material to make a connection, and take the center core wire to the other side. It's cheap if you already have the cable and no transformer.

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Posted by: Geotrick on February 17, 2009 at 10:40 PM

I used zip ties for the u bolts and Heat Shrink wrap I had on hand instead of tape ( it is a lot cleaner).

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Do you know if different materials affect reception? ie. aluminum vs. steel rod. I was thinking of using some aluminum welding rod to fabricate the antenna pieces.

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So what kind of range can be expected by building one of these. I Have an outdoor antenna that is close to 15 years old. It has weathered many storms and wind take-downs. I live around 60 to 70 miles from the farthest station that I currently get with my old beater-tenna and converter box. Could I expect the same results, or less?

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I used #12 household wiring instead of a coat hanger for conductivity and flexibility reasons. I also put three of these antennas in a triangle pattern for a more omni-directional receive pattern. I used a standard 3 way bi-directional splitter in reverse and amplified the output of the splitter with a 25db CATV amp I found on e-bay for $9.00 plus P&H because I am pushing the signal 30 feet from the attic and splitting out to two different TV's in the house. This antenna works great! I get 10 HDTV signals in Annapolis and they are about being broadcast about 30 miles away. The antenna in inside my attic near a window pointing towards the west. If you put one of these outside I would suspect you could pull in signals over 50 miles away. The total project cost me less than 30 dollars out of pocket and about 2 hours of my time. Most of the parts were laying around my house as scrap. Picture is crystal clear, better than what you get off of cable, because the cable company actually compresses to restrict bandwidth.

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This antenna was easy to build and works very well for UHF stations, but there are many stations that are continuing to broadcast on VHF even after the HDTV conversion. So, what I did to modify this was build a half-dipole antenna and attach the two leads to the two leads at the bottom of the antenna and now I can get both VHF and UHF great. I hope to post pictures on my blog soon: http://wisefinish.com It may be a little bit because I have go go back up into my attic and it is very cold up there right now!

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Posted by: bubba hoots on March 10, 2009 at 4:58 PM

I made on just like John's. I did pretty well for my first! I live in a rural area, but I picked in 8 to 9 channels! It did good for the $10 I spent on it! AND that was with no converter.

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I was surfing on the internet on how to make a TV itself (practically impossible) but I found this video instead. I was borrowing a GE "rabbit ears" antenna from a relative, and using the antenna bar on my converter box, I only got about 30-40% reception. I went to my local Dollar Tree and bought some hangers, and took them with me to another relative's house along with an old coax cable and RadioShack transformer. We built it in about two and a half hours, and three days later when I got home, I got 70% RECEPTION. I even get this low-power religious station well! (I don't watch it, though).

Thanks again Makezine TV, keep the good stuff comin'!

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Posted by: robert on May 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM

First time maker, thought i could get this digital project on the first try, For some reason I only get channel 21. Wonder if someone out there can give me a hint as to what I am doing wrong. Gonna try to bring the antenna to the attic to get more channels?

Please someone give me a clue.
Rotten

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Posted by: number1narna@yahoo.com on May 22, 2009 at 1:35 PM

Is bigger better? if I made it longer with more "V's" would it work better?

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I live in Long Beach, California -- condo & apartment city, about 30 miles from the nearest transmitter towers. We get terrible reception normally, and mounting an antenna outside of our 2nd-story apartment is out of the question. With our indoor antenna, only about 4 channels are watchable -- analog or digital. So, I was super excited to try this project after finding a link at Consumer Reports' website, of all places (while researching retail antennas).

Spent quite a few hours on this one. I even took the time to stain & seal the wood block and sand the hanger wire from top to bottom so it wouldn't look so gosh-darn ugly. Put a lot of love and sweat into this project, only to receive... the most garbled, useless digital signal in the world.

I'm glad this worked for some of you. For me, it's a total bust; time and money down the drain. Maybe adding a Signal Amplifier to the line would help (that's a big maybe), but once you add that cost to your bill (an additional $40 at Radio Shack, for example), you might as well just buy a "real" amplified antenna, take whatever channels you can get, and save yourself the hassle.

I'm going back to my RCA ANT1550 Digital Flat Amplified Antenna. It's the ONLY antenna that has EVER worked for us in this over-the-air TV dead-zone. What a drag. Best of luck to the rest of you, though.

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By the way, I couldn't find wire hangers anywhere, either. After searching several dollar stores and department stores, I stopped at the local dry cleaner's shop and asked if I could buy a few wire hangers off of them. They were happy to oblige.

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I finally got around to making this tonight (a day late), plugged it in, and found 35 Channels. I got 8 or 10 with a UHF rabbit-ear antenna, and ZERO with my old roof antenna. I think I'll make a couple more to aim different directions.

Thanks again.

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Hey John!!
I really liked your antenna and it worked for me perfectly. I have a lot of wire in copper and my question is if I can do the same antenna but using this type of wire instead of the wire coat hangers.
Thank you, I really appreciate your help!

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Hey John!!
I really liked your antenna and it works perfectly for me. I have a lot of wire in copper and my question is if I can use this type of wire for the antenna instead of the wire coat hanger.
Thank you, I really appreciate your help!

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Hi guys,

I built my antenna but not sure what transformer to use.
I intend to use this with a USB DVB-T (http://www1.dealextreme.com/productimages/sku_8309_4.jpg)
Can you tell me how to plub my antenna into this ?

thanks
Geeum

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This is a neat little project. I'm going to try building the antenna soon.

Question: can you explain the method for calculating the sizes of the antenna elements? If I can get the UHF version that's described here working, then I was thinking I'd like to try to make a version of this antenna for the VHF channels and maybe one cut specifically for the FM band. At those lower frequencies the antenna elements need to be bigger, so I want to be able to calculate exactly what sizes they should be.

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could you explain step 6 attach tv transformer.
Please explain the what the attachments in the Xs are made of. Is it wire or clothes hangers. The instructions does not mention this part of the building process.

Thanks

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Would it be possible to make three antenna's, arrange them in a triangle configuration, join the antenna's together with 2-lead wire (on the middle screws in step 6), and then attach the three pieces of 2-lead to one transformer? Thanks.

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I built this antenna today and I have some tips to keep in mind to make the build go easier:

1. At the two points where the two "straight" wires cross, one wire should be wrapped in electrical tape to keep the two sets of elements isolated. I know this is mentioned in the video but it's not noted in the printed instructions.

2. Add the electrical tape to the crossover points *before* you tighten all the wires down. I didn't do that and had to partly disassemble the antenna to add the tape.

3. The ends of the cut wires from the clothes hangers are sharp! Sharp enough to cut yourself on (one of my fingers is wrapped in a bandage because of this). So wrap something around the sharp ends of the wires as soon as they're cut to the correct lengths. Plastic or rubber caps would be good. I used little bits of duct tape on mine.

4. When you buy the #6 screws, the ones that hold the wires in place, get ones with as wide heads as you can. The ones I got had small heads and I couldn't get them to hold the wires in place. I eventually solved it by putting the wires underneath the washers, but it would be better if the heads were large enough to hold the wires themselves.

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we made the antenna without any problems , had tons of fun making the antenna as a join project, what we learned was the difference between uhf and vhf, so the antenna works very good but, only on the uhf channels. is there a way to make it both uhf and vhf . we now get the higher number channels , but are having problems with the smaller number channels.
nena and ted

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Doh!

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Great Video! Very well done. I can't wait to try it. I see so many people buying expensive HDTV antennae that probably will not work as well. One point: Some DTV channels will stay on VHF channels in some areas, such as 7 and 9 in the DC area. Do you have any suggestions to modify the antenna to pick up those channels? Also, what about using PVC pipe as a stand, or painted wood. My wife will not like the look in the TV room, although I will. Thanks again.

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I'm going to make this antenna to put outside. I'm wondering, can I use my electrical booster for my philips outdoor antenna with this one safely? I don't want to have anybody get shocked. I'm also curious about Kurt's question about modifying the design for VHF as well.

Thanks

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I live out in the middle of a corn field, about an hours drive to any city with TV stations. I was shocked at how well this simple design works, 16 stations, just too amazing.
Thanks.

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Made the DTV antenna from the PDF directions and it works great. Just got a converter for an old portable analog TV in a travel trailer and needed a better antenna to drive the converter box. Mounted the antenna on an old fiberglass extension pole from a broken tree pole trimmer. Attached the whole antenna on the outside of the trailer and cabled into the TV inside. Locked on 30+ channels in the Tulsa Oklahoma area with the antenna. Really enjoyed the project and the outcome.

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USED 8 GAUGE COPPER WIRE,HOME DEPOT,COULD NOT FIND WIRE HANGERS,EASY TO BEND,WILL NOT RUST,SHRINK TUBING ON BOTH INSTEAD OF TAPE.

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Thanks to all of the posters that verified how well this antenna works or I never would have tried it. Thank you for the great how to video and plans. I made mine and it pulls in TWICE as many stations as my $100 GE 94757 attic antenna. I threw the GE in the trash. I had no use for it. This antenna is amazing!!!

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I enjoyed watching John Park's video, but without being able to copy the instruction, it's not likely I'll be making one. PDF files are not exactly friendly.

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John,

I went ahead and bought the parts and built my coat hanger antenna last night. I'm quite happy with the reception. Plus, I added the pipe and base similar to your video for strong support of the antenna.

The antenna build worked fine on the first attempt and the reception is better than the rabbit ear antenna I had been using and better than the $40 antenna I bought at a store.

The only suggestion I would add is to either sand the tips of the protruding antenna wires or cap them off as after moving my finished antenna, I notice a small scratch on my arm. The protruding wires can be a bit sharp if one isn't careful.

Thanks for the instructive video and printable PDF file with the instructions.

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Help if you can please!

I followed the instructions to a tee and placed the antenna on the second floor railing of my deck to test it. I only get 80% of one channel. I live in watkinsville, ga which is just outsife of athens, ga, a fairly big urban area, so I expected to pick up more stations. What am I doing wrong? I taped the hangers as described, sanded the hangers and used prob a 20 year old transformer laying around.

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i screwed up. i cut all of the wires in half. i had only one extra, and used it as the long wire. for the other long wire, i just used some 18 or so guage wire twisted together. i did everything else as i should have (more or less) and i used a transformer from radioshack like linked in the comments(only not gold plated). the problem is that when i plugged it in, I DIDN'T GET anything!! the only thing i got was channel two (cbs, or what ever the little eyething is). what did i do wrong. it was going to be the first thing i tried to make the worked, im so sad about it, adn right before my birthday.

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