Make:

Here is a question wouldn’t your design be better if it was more directional? Like if you had a back reflector plane like the one I made here?

http://bendersrantblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/big-switch-to-digital-tv.html

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Seriously, all those good folks had to take the plunge and buy their digtal converter box. They now have to replace their analog coat hangers with digital coat hangers.

OK everyone, off to visit your Digital Dry Cleaners so you can stay up with the new technology.

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Just a general question...what audio codecs do the torrent files use? I ask because when I try to play the episodes with my new Western Digital HD TV player, the video displays fine but the audio does not.

Here is the device I am using:

http://wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=572

here is the huge thread about the device and its capabilities:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1080840

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@bender: http://www.jedsoft.org/fun/antennas/dtv/xgh.html

Or could do a fractal design: http://ruckman.net/blog/news.php?item.21.4

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Posted by: Make: television on January 15, 2009 at 12:20 PM

@Bob Boerner

Looking at the specs it should play fine.

The Audio Codec for the HD .mov file is
ACC, Stereo (L,R) 48,000 kHz

Are you working with the HD .mov file or the iPod .m4v?

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I watched this episode the other day and I remember electrical tape being used to insulate two wires. I don't see any mention of this in this .pdf.
Can you tell me what wires are to be insulated and where??

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I just made the coat hanger digital TV antenna. Once completed, I hooked it up to the converter and TV here in the "bedroom studio/ham shack" of my one story rural Indiana home. Even sitting on a table inside the house, it worked great getting the local channels, some of which aren't so "local" as they are 30 - 40 miles away. 'Works much better than the rabbit ears setup I tested for comparison.

I presently have cable but I made this one for my son who lives in the projects of a nearby town and cannot afford an elaborate entertainment setup. I may build another in case my cable provider and I have a falling out. I can only imagine how well it would perform on top of our forty foot tower.

Btw, I used a Christmas tree stand for the mount. And, yes, the crossovers should be insulated. A piece of electrical tape between them does the trick.

They can say what they want for debunking the "digital" antenna. It's all about the right dimensions. Thanks for a great alternative antenna, guys!

Jim

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After getting frustrated by a $100 "omnidirectional" antenna that didn't tune in a couple of local stations, I put this one together, and it works great. Right now it's just sitting on my living room floor, leaning up against a bookcase, and it's outperforming any other antenna I've ever tried.

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By the way, there's a missing dimension line in the PDF. On page 2, there should be a horizontal line showing that the first screw holes are two inches down from the top of the board.

Also, step 5 (on page 4) should mention that the wires should be insulated wherever they cross in the middle of the board.

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We've always had difficult TV reception where I live (Shoreview, MN). Since the broadcast antennas are close by, you would think reception would be good, but not so.

I simplified the mounting a bit. Instead of a 3/4" thick board, I used a 2x4, added about 6 inches to the length and drilled a 1/2" hole in the bottom. Then I put a 1/2" dowel sticking up from the wood base. The 2x4 sits on the dowel eliminating the need for the flange and pipe.

Total cost to me was $.75. The cost of the transformer.

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Posted by: CMHDave on January 19, 2009 at 7:03 PM

I have all the pieces for this pretty much in place but I want to test out a minor modification before I post final pictures. To start with, the rabbit ears I have on the TV set now pull in our local PBS station with an 18-20 signal strength out of 100. I'll measure what kind of signal strength I get with this as described. My minor modification is using cookie cooling racks from the dollar store (2 for $1) as a back "reflector" to further mimic the DB4 design. I am not sure if it'll make an iota of difference but it doesn't hurt to check.

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I bought a $100 non-amplified antenna (Winegard Square Shooter) from a local electronics shop. It was overkill since I'm just outside the city. 2 days later I saw this post. I built the antenna tonight and placed it in the same spot. I measured the signal strength on both using a function on my TV and this antenna is a couple of % better than the store bought one on every channel. Ha! I'm mounting it in the attic, so this one will work fine.

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Where can I get the transformer?
I cant find any hangers here localy..... will 2.63mm thick wire work? (I have close to 100 ft of it & its all straight) If so how long are the V shaped pices? Any help would be greatly appriciated..

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If anyone is interested in a simpler antenna design, get a length of wire, the longer the better, and throw it in your attic. And connect the wire to the center lead of the coax going to your tv, don't connect anything to shielding. I am not kidding, it works extremely well, no design, no muss. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that this was a recognized antenna design at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_wire_antenna

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I unbent a paper clip and crammed it into the back of my converter box. I get everything in the yellow zone on AntennaWeb for my address. The PBS is a little pixely sometimes.

Of course, the TV is on a upper level of the house near a window, so I wouldn't necessarily try this stunt down in the family room, but it bodes well for if I ever actually source some wire hangers and try this antenna.

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Posted by: williethewisp on January 26, 2009 at 11:04 AM

just wondering, what type of transformer is used, and where would i get one, as this seems like a nice project to make :)

cheers in advance
Williethewisp

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You can take the transformer from your old rabbit ear set if you make this antenna, since you won't need your old rabbit ears anyway.

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I dont have a old set of rabbit ears! where do i get a transformer????????

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Uhg. If you can't figure out how to get ahold of the transformer then you probably shouldn't be doing the projects. Go to Radio Shack or GOOGLE "75 to 300 ohm matching transformer".

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Posted by: Phillip Torrone on January 27, 2009 at 6:41 AM

hello anonymous commenter, you wrote "Uhg. If you can't figure out how to get ahold of the transformer then you probably shouldn't be doing the projects. Go to Radio Shack or GOOGLE "75 to 300 ohm matching transformer"."

please be a little more supportive, for many folks this is their first project or they're not expert makers yet - we all started somewhere - keep it encouraging and inclusive :)

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Posted by: williethewisp on January 27, 2009 at 9:17 AM

lol, missed that on the pdf, (materials list) but cheers for the help...

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I saw this project on the TV show (on the old rabbit-ears), and decided to give it a try. I didn't have any of the materials, so I went around to a couple of stores to pick up the coat hangers, bolts, transformer, etc. The total cost to me was $15, and it works much much better than the rabbit-ears I used to find out about it in the first place! Excellent project for a newbie, and getting the transformer was simpler than I'd thought it would be: any decent electronics store should have one for about a dollar. Thanks, MAKE!

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Can i use 1 antenna for 2 tv's with a splitter?

Also does the antenna need aimed? Or is it non directional? I live inbetween 2 difrant countys & get signals form both.....

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Posted by: Make: television on February 6, 2009 at 7:36 AM

@ lance,
Not sure about the splitter question, we haven't tried that yet. You should give it a shot with a splitter, and let us know how it works!

We also didn't experiment much with aiming the antenna (mainly because we were getting pretty good reception as is). But based on some of the comments we've gotten already, seems like adding a back reflector has really helped some.

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Thank you MAKE! You have relieved me from so much frustration of trying to get a good reception! Plus, we now get PBS! Hope to see the show on WQPT or iPTV (Quad Cities) soon! Thank you, thank you, thank you again! :-)

A splitter works for me. I will most likely try a second splitter to go to another room.

To elaborate, the splitter I'm using now goes to two separate digital converters. Both converters hook up to a DVD/VCR combo. One converter outputs to the player's coaxial input and the other outputs to the auxiliary (AU) RCA input (RCA output available on the type of converter I have).

I can record the AU channel on the VCR and watch another show from the other converter on TV channel 03. I can check what is being recorded on the AU channel on TV channel 00.

I can also reverse the above set up. I can watch channel 00 and record channel 03. However, the VCR does not have to be on if I'm just watching channel 03 and not recording.

Other notes: I can set the VCR to record AU or 03, but the correct digital converter has to be left on the channel I want to record. I have to block the infrared receiver from the remote if I'm changing channels. Also have to be careful to leave the volume up on the converter; if it is too low even turning up the TV might not make it loud enough.

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Thank you MAKE! You have relieved me from so much frustration of trying to get a good reception! Plus, we now get PBS! Hope to see the show on WQPT or iPTV (Quad Cities) soon! Thank you, thank you, thank you again! :-)

A splitter works for me. I will most likely try a second splitter to go to another room.

To elaborate, the splitter I'm using now goes to two separate digital converters. Both converters hook up to a DVD/VCR combo. One converter outputs to the player's coaxial input and the other outputs to the auxiliary (AU) RCA input (RCA output available on the type of converter I have).

I can record the AU channel on the VCR and watch another show from the other converter on TV channel 03. I can check what is being recorded on the AU channel on TV channel 00.

I can also reverse the above set up. I can watch channel 00 and record channel 03. However, the VCR does not have to be on if I'm just watching channel 03 and not recording.

Other notes: I can set the VCR to record AU or 03, but the correct digital converter has to be left on the channel I want to record. I have to block the infrared receiver from the remote if I'm changing channels. Also have to be careful to leave the volume up on the converter; if it is too low even turning up the TV might not make it loud enough.

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Re: Bender's 1/14 "Question" about directionality. It's a tradeoff. Performance is better when it is aimed right but if you need more than one direction it has to be turned
or switch between two antennas. If you can get by without directionality, it is easier.

Other similar designs on the web use "v" elements with 7" legs (instead of 8"). Anyone know how this effects performance? The one I have with 7" legs performs well but have not made an 8" version yet. I have not tried a reflector yet but may.

Fred, justcomm.org/dtv

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In the comments it's stated that the wires should be insulated where they cross...Does that mean the entire cross area or just where the wires physically touch? Is there any reason I can't just use regular stranded copper wire for the connecting wires? I'm guessing regular wire would work just fine, but I'd rather ask...

Thanks!

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So, I built this project tonight, with a few minor changes. I decided to use 14AWG, stranded, copper wire with the insulation removed where I wrap it around the fasteners but left on everywhere else. For fasteners I used #10-24x1" machine screws with corresponding nuts and #8 washers on each side of the wood. Everything was mounted on a 4x1/2" board. I hung the matching transformer off the back side of the antenna instead of the front. For a base I've got four L-brackets with two holes in each side on the bottom, mounted on pair each side and across from the one on the other side of the board. I just used four of the #10-24 screws and nuts/washers to hold the L-brackets to the wood. I haven't currently mounted the antenna to anything else for a base since it was stable enough with just the metal L-brackets to test with. It looks fairly hideous, but it *works*.

The net result? I went from six analog and three digital signals with the old rabbit-ears to four analog and ten digital signals with the home-built antenna. I didn't expect it to work this well, but it did. Total cost: about $9, including the 12' of cable I had to buy and the fasteners.

Oh, all of this was done with the antenna positioned pretty far away from the nearest window. I'm debating putting the entire thing on a board with some sort of reflector behind the coat-hangers (wire cooling rack would make a good reflector?), wrapping it all in black fabric and hanging it upside-down from the ceiling behind the fixed part of the glass door that leads on to my apartment's balcony. Would the reflector idea work, and would wrapping the thing with fabric cause any real problems?

Thanks again for the idea and plans for the project.

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Besides missing an extension line for the 2" dimension, it's not clear what is 5 3/4" from what. Spacing the holes at 5 3/4" comes no where close to positioning the holes in places that resemble the drawing. Maybe the problem is the base shouldn't be 30" long. Something is wrong.

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OK, the problem is the length of the board is given as 30" on page 2 but 20" on page 1. 20" is better, but then the 2" dimension should be 1 3/8" or the 20" should be 21 1/4" and the 10" should be 10 5/8".

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A couple things:

After the DTV transition here I lost some channels. Rescanning didn't bring them back, and I figured it must be an antenna issue, so I went ahead and built the above antenna. It certainly works better than a plain old UHF circle but it didn't affect my missing channels.

The detail was those channels had been temporarily on UHF before the transition, and after the transition they went back to their VHF channels (for reference this is KARE-11 and KMSP-9 in Minneapolis, MN). This antenna design really doesn't work well for VHF, and believe it or not a $6 pair of bunny ears solved that problem for me!

I have this antenna for UHF

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-PHDTV1-Silver-Digital-Antenna/dp/B0007XDI54/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

and it beats the home made one here by about 5-9% in signal strength on all channels. The coat hanger antenna does work, but before you invest a bunch of time in this project consider all your options. I had fun building the darn thing anyway, and might have a use for it in the future. My investment was about $4.00 for the transformer and screws.

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By adding 2 Metal Mesh squares on the back of this and a subscriber amp I can cancel my cable. I used solid Copper Wire which seems to work better but it does cost a whole lot more than free clothes hangers.
-Ryan

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Works better than the amplified Jensen antenna I have for the bedroom TV and the amplified RCA antenna for the living room. Wish it would pick up VHF signals better though.

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I used copper wire instead of coat hangers and went from 4 channels at best 70% signal to 13 channels with 88-100% signal (installed in attic).

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Can someone please tell me how to hook the antenna up after you make it? Does it hook up to the converter box and if so, how? Thanks.

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GOOD PROJECT, I JUST THREW IT TOGETHER THIS AFTERNOON, AND WITH JUST PUTTING IT IN WINDOW NEAR TV GOT ABOUT 3 MORE CHANNELS, PROBABLY NEED TO CHECK TRANSFORMER, JUST ONE I PICKED UP FROM 20 YEARS AGO, CAN'T WAIT TO PUT IT OUTSIDE,SO FAR $0 INVESTED!

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I live in Cherokee Village in Northeast Arkansas and according to antennaweb.org "There are no stations predicted to serve this location.".

Before "the big switch", I was able to get a poor but usable signal from kait in Jonesboro. Since then my converter box cannot even detect the digital signal. Will this antenna design work well enough to at least give me kait again?

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