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Saturday, February 9, 2013

Cutting the cable! Homemade TV antenna!

Today I decided that I would turn in the old crappy cable box and save a few hundred dollars a month. I only watch a few prime time shows, and I more than likely will never miss cable except for my ability to record a few shows at once! While standing in line waiting to turn in the useless device that was only good for charging me money to collect dust in my house. I had a antenna moment and decided to build one of those simple UHF antennas for my decent sized TV in the living room. I goggled homemade TV antenna and jumped over to.......
http://www.tvantennaplans.com/
It has a few simple designs that work pretty well and generally cost around 5-15 Dollars depending on what you already have laying around the shack!

I ended up with 2 antennas because my cable free neighbor needed a antenna also So I made him a 2 element TV antenna!

ANTENNA 2 after a little practice I build one with a reflector...  It was a hair stronger than mine with a  reflector added on! The picture is with a real TV channel on.
 ANTENNA 1  I used this one without a reflector and ended up with 40 channels!!!
Overall I was surprised by the signal of these little guys! A lot better than buying a antenna that would be weaker and a lot more money. And they can hide out in a corner if you are chicken to look poor!
Stay tuned because I'm building a 16 Element with reflector as soon as I get more wire and brass screws!!!! I will also add in a Homebrew Howto after I modify the design a little to make it a little more efficient!

Please Click a few AD's for me  So I can keep up the MAD SCIENTIST act!
Here is a picture tutorial for the Insane! Enjoy!!!


                 Also see another version here 

1 comment:

  1. Made one here in Sweden, 53 channels now 30 more than the powered antenna that came with the house. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete