DIY Guide: How to Make a Homemade UHF Digital TV Antenna

Need an HDTV antenna without spending any money? A few wires, cardboard, washers and hangers are all that you need – so follow this simple DIY guide and make your own homemade HDTV antenna to prevent signal drop-outs at the wrong time! It will hardly take you an hour or so, to make your personal homemade antenna with whatever is lying around in your junkyard or store room; here’s how you can do it.

1. Pick a small plywood piece (or other weather resistant or weather impervious material) – say 30×16 inches in size, and some grates from an old oven or a couple of metal drying racks.

2. Wrap the piece with the aluminum foil type of high temperature duct tape.

3. Now, cut a 2 X 4 to the proper length and prepare a notch cut in the bottom (so as to be able to mount it in the rotor or on the mast). For instance if your board is 30×16, you may want to keep a 5 inch notch cut…

4. Lay down the 2 X 4, lay the board face down on top of it and center it, and nail it in with some roofing nails.

5. Next, you need to figure out the place for bowties, and then the matching transformer needs to be connected at the center.

6. Grab a few screws and washers, and four coat hangers. It’s time to get rid of the head of these hangers and cut the base to form couple of V-sections from each of them.

Moving on, you need to trim these 8 V-sections in such a way that their legs are about 7 inches long, and then polish or roughen the elbows of these V sections with sand paper just where they make contact with the washer.

7. You need to find more coat hangers, or probably anything stiff that can do the trick. Having done that, it’s time to put your V sections under each washer, with the wire.

Next, tighten the screw, but before that you may want to ensure that your wires and V’s have same length so as to create the right phasing. More so, the wires will crisscross on the ends, but you’ll have to keep at least one of them insulated.

8. Finally, you’re good to go ahead and connect your matching transformer in the middle, and check that the Vs are parallel with the foil background and placed uniformly.

Now, it’s time to bid a happy goodbye to all the age old crappy antennas that you’ve (if any) and install your latest DIY creation.

Note: This antenna is expected to work well with UHF frequencies, and you can’t expect it to catch the weakest VHF channels for sure.

Further Improvements and Points to Remember

Here are some points to keep in mind -

• For better results, you may want to add a reflector four inches behind the antenna. This can be any type of lightweight mesh material, and it should protrude beyond the bowties equally on all sides.

• Position the bowties as precisely as you can.

• Exact measurements will always produce better results.

• If you use copper wire in the bowties, try to keep it as straight as possible.


Disclaimer: There are several ways to make a homemade HDTV antenna and this is just one of the simpler ways, though you can’t expect the best results with this.

Suggested Reading

1. Finding TV Antenna for Your HDTV
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