Home-made HDTV antenna

1 of 4

http://cosinekitty.com/hdtv/

Don Cross built his own HDTV antenna (and you can too!)
See also: Make your own 3G or 4G antenna, by Damon Chandler.

1 June 2009
I finally caved in and purchased an HDTV, since we are days away from the demise of analog television.
There is no cable TV available where I live, and I did not feel like spending $50 per month on satellite
service, since I really don't want to spend that much time watching TV in the first place. Without an
antenna attached, the new TV didn't pick up anything at all, of course. I tried hanging a 4-foot section of
insulated wire from my window and poking it right into the coaxial receptacle on the back of the TV, and
sure enough, I could receive most of the stations in my area just fine. But there were quite a few that were
hopelessly garbled. I experimented with even longer pieces of wire, but this made things even worse.
I did some research and I found the following do-it-yourself HDTV antenna design:

TV Antenna Plans schematics and instructions by Peter A. Daly.

Below is a photo of me holding the one I built for myself. It works great! Just about every TV station in a
25-mile radius is coming in crystal clear without any distortion that I can notice.

(Click for larger view.)

Here are some notes of things I figured out or read elsewhere:
I did not use sheet metal reflectors, because I want to receive stations in all different directions from
where I live. Omitting the reflectors reduces directionality. With the reflectors, you have to aim the
antenna at the stations you are most interested in, but it will help make their signals even stronger.
It helps to use washers with a large outside diameter. I started with smaller ones but the coat hanger
wire kept popping out from underneath. After switching to 1-cm washers, things worked a lot better.
It is virtually impossible to hand-tighten the screws enough to keep the V-sections from moving

28/07/2015 9:50

Home-made HDTV antenna

2 of 4

http://cosinekitty.com/hdtv/

around. Go ahead and use your cordless drill and really torque those screws down! You don't want
these things coming loose and falling off later.
The balun (300-to-75, RadioShack part 15-1230) is attached to the second pair of screws from
the bottom, instead of using additional screws in the very middle along the vertical. I saw someone
else mention that they attach the balun to the very bottom pair of screws and it works fine, so I
thought I would try a compromise between the two. It is important to understand that the balun is
not just an adapter for convenience. It matches the impedance between the antenna and the TV, and
balances the signal. If you try to connect the antenna directly to the coax, you will get very poor
results.
If you build one of these things, be careful! I gave myself a slight injury by stupidly leaning it
against the wall without properly mounting it. (Just to test it out temporarily, I told myself.) Minutes
later I accidentally tipped it over by pulling on some cables. One of the coat hanger tips punctured
the skin on the palm of my hand. That REALLY hurts! I recommend filing down the sharp tips of
the coat hanger wire. It might be a good idea to figure out how to fold cardboard strips along the
sides to cover up the tips, or even build a wood frame around the sides so that it is not possible for
one of these things to end up in your eye. One challenge would be to do this without using
conductive materials to fasten and mess up the antenna geometry.
This thing admittedly is not very pretty. I mounted it behind the TV cabinet and used the shortest
coax cable I could find (4 feet long) to connect it to the TV. The antenna and the cable are thus
completely hidden from view. A short cable is supposed to be better also for signal quality, from
what I have read elsewhere. The mount is a simple drywall anchor with a nail stuck into it. I hang
the antenna on the nail using the hole drilled in the top of the board.
I like the fact that the antenna is indoors where lightning can't hit it. I live in Florida, which has
more lightning strikes than anywhere else in North America. Also, with our heat and humidity here,
this thing would definitely rust in no time outdoors.

12 June 2009
The other night I moved the antenna into the upstairs side attic above the TV. I drilled a hole through the
attic floor to feed the cable through. I have a 16-foot cable connecting the TV and the antenna, and there
is a fair amount of cable slack, so the antenna is probably about 10 feet above the TV now.
Before and after I raised the antenna higher, I went through all the channels and wrote down signal
strengths, based on the TV's built-in signal strength meter. Almost all of the TV signals are stronger now.
The signal strength meter has a scale that goes from 0 to 100, and on many of the channels the strength
went up by 20 points. None of the signals got weaker. I can even receive 3 channels now that I couldn't
before! I like the fact that the antenna is so much higher, but is still sheltered from rain and lightning.
Using the wonderful TV Fool web site, I can tell that just about every TV station I care about is to the
south of my house, so I am thinking I might be able to improve reception strength and reduce multipath
interference (especially during bad weather) by adding reflectors on the north side of the antenna. This
weekend I intend to experiment with some simple reflectors made of cardboard and aluminum foil to see
if they make any difference, for better or for worse.
And while I'm at it, I may also experiment with making an entire antenna out of cardboard and aluminum
foil. I think that would be pretty darn funny, having a high-tech piece of equipment attached to some
cheap junk, especially if it worked well!

14 June 2009
Yesterday I tried two different experiments, neither of which provided any detectable change in signal
quality.

28/07/2015 9:50

Home-made HDTV antenna

3 of 4

http://cosinekitty.com/hdtv/

First, I added two extra screws at the very center of the antenna for attaching the balun, as specified in the
TV Antenna Plans site. Although I could not measure any difference in signal strength, I do have to admit
that this antenna would have been easier to assemble if I had made it this way in the first place. My
original approach made it awkward to hold two pieces of coat hanger wire, a washer, and the balun
terminal in place while torquing down these two screws. For that reason alone, I recommend using the
extra two screws and washers if you are building one of these antennas for yourself. Here is what the
antenna looks like now:

(Click for larger view.)

Antenna hanging in attic, with balun centered.
The next thing I tried was to put a reflector on the north side of the antenna, since all of the TV stations I
care about are to the south of my home. I used a cardboard box measuring 23"23"3.5", on which I
taped two sections of aluminum foil measuring 9"15". This did not make any detectable improvement in
signal strength either. I don't know whether aluminum foil isn't a good enough reflector of UHF, or 3.5" is
too far away from the plane of the antenna, or something else is going on. The photograph below shows
the cardboard box after I ripped the aluminum foil off.

28/07/2015 9:50

Home-made HDTV antenna

4 of 4

http://cosinekitty.com/hdtv/

(Click for larger view.)

Cardboard box I used for the aluminum foil
reflector experiment. The black rectangles
show where I had the 9"15" sections of foil.

28/07/2015 9:50