how can you make a home made t.v antenna?

Question

ya I already have a color t.v and on of those crappy t.v antennas how can I amplfy the antenna to get more channels? should I try alummuim foil?

Answer 1

Wow, you got all kinds of answers...none of them very good.

You need to spend some time looking at The Radio Ameteur's Handbook. In there are pages and pages of antenna theory and construction articles for various antennas.



Materials you will need:

Plexiglass for insulators

aluminum tubing for elements

Aluminum tubing or a long wood pole for a boom to mount

the elements upon.

300 ohm ribbon cable for feedline, or 75 ohm coax feedline

depending upon the type of driven element you choose.

a folded dipole requires 300 ohm feed

a half wave dipole requires 75 ohm feed



I would suggest you look into the idea of a 3 element beam antenna...not to hard to build at home.



you need to determine what channels the antenna is going to work on - that determines the length of the elements. The driven element is the one that is most critical.



Each Television Channel has a Frequency (Sound and Picture). Look this up on the Internet using a search. Then use L = 468/Freq in Mhz to get the element length for a half wave dipole. The director should be 8 percent shorter. The reflector should be 8 percent longer. Use some of the spacing information in the handbook to get a rough idea of element spacing in inches.

Answer 2

Well if you get any channels would depend on how close you are to any broadcasting towers. You can build an indoor antenna or an outside antenna. Which if you build an inside antenna and not really close to any transmitting towers you may not receive any channels. An outside antenna would better your chances of course. Its kinda difficult to explain how to make a good antenna on here but they do have lots of info on how to build a homemade antenna on the net. You can look up "homemade tv antenna" something like that. Remember to hook up a converter box. Also you might want to make a UHF type antenna, since after the switchover, most stations switched to the UHF band. If you were just wanting to make a simple indoor antenna...I mean you could use a wire coat hanger and make a pair of rabbit ears out of it. But you'll still need a converter box otherwise you'll get nothin, just static. Although i suppose you could make a small outdoor antenna and use it indoors. Any way, just look at different sites.

Answer 3

good ol metal coat hanger

Answer 4

METAL CLOTHES HANGER