High performance TV antenna from one piece of wire..

[Fumesucker]

I built this little antenna today, one piece of wire 60" long bent in five places and I was blown away by how well it works, I nearly doubled the number of channels I was picking up and got a second PBS station. I live in a fairly far suburb and most of my stations are at least 25 miles away over fairly hilly terrain with lots of trees.

There is a small group of hobbyists on the net using genetic algorithm antenna design software to come up with new TV antenna designs and this is one of their inventions, it's more or less omnidirectional so it wouldn't be suitable if you live in the boonies but for someone in a less remote area it can pull in a signal remarkably well for something so simple.

Keep in mind that this antenna, like any, is sensitive to position and having things, particularly metal, nearby, it will generally work better outdoors and up high than inside and down low. The nice thing about putting this outdoors is that it's basically invisible from more than about fifteen feet away and would be really hard for even the nosiest HOA to spot and complain about.

http://sites.google.com/site/maycreates/ota-setup/my-stealth-hawk

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. What is the little gizmo that the copper is attached to?

I'd love to try this. I live on a hill overlooking pretty much all of Tucson and am thinking something like this might work pretty well for me.

[Fumesucker]

2. In that case it's a small plastic electrical box from the hardware store..

Pretty much any kind of non conductive plastic could be used as long as it's strong enough and you can find a way to mount it away from other stuff.. The electrical box is good because the plastic is made to be UV resistant if you mount it outdoors, a lot of plastics will break down in sunlight..

I made mine of ipe, aka Brazilian walnut, it's the wood the Atlantic City Boardwalk is made of, highly weather resistant and I just happened to have a bit of scrap flooring around.. I also used some aluminum wire instead of copper, the original of this unit was made of galvanized steel wire that goes along the bottom of chain link fences..

A couple of coat hangers and a scrap of wood would be enough for a test unit, scrape the paint off the coathangers and twist them together at the upper point then make the rest of the unit from there.. The lengths aren't absolutely critical but the closer you stick to the pattern the better it's likely to work.

It was easiest for me to bend the bottom legs first until I ended up with something that looked like a top hat, then I bent the middle until the points were 2" apart and I was done.. I marked all my bend points on the wire with a pencil before I started, that made it easier too..

You could even use thin wire and tape it on a window, as long as you connect to the 2" points with leads it should work..

A balun/matching transformer and some coaxial cable sufficient to reach your TV will be needed..

[RKP5637]

3. Wow! It's sure simpler looking than the Antennas Direct DB8 Multidirectional HDTV Antenna

[GoCubsGo]

4. That's really cool!

I may have to try that one of these days. I made one of the coat hanger antennas with 4 bows a few years ago. It works fairly well. I was looking at your other post that had second version with only 3 pairs of bow ties that are spread farther apart. For the hell of it, I went and spread apart the bows on my antenna. Since the coat hangers I used were slightly warped, they don't touch each other. Lo and behold, I am now able to get fairly good reception for some stations I couldn't get in very well! I guess I have a hybrid between the two now. Wish I had done that long ago. I like this Stealth Hawk antenna better. It's nice and clean.