Indoor / Outdoor Bowtie Antenna - Instructables

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Indoor / Outdoor Bowtie Antenna

by imark77

I've always been fascinated with the standard bowtieantenna, and found that they had good properties. sowhen I was at a RadioShack a while back and saw 2of them on the rack for $5 each, I couldn't help myselfand added 2 to my collection making 3. I had acouple ideas behind this.... 1. a good antenna thatstays home. 2. a not so great, I don't care if it getsbent in half. antenna for travel with my usb TV tuner.and 3. what if I made an outdoor version of thisantenna and stuck it on my roof?

decided to implement the original idea.

The original idea was to encase it in something like apipe, I had a pipe set aside but it didn't make themove. there was also the idea floating in my headthat a smaller pipe might be better but would requirebeing squished in to an oval, so a trip to the storelanded me with a 3 inch piece of pipe and my recentlyacquired heat gun.

- Yes it recycles, although I bought the antenna andthe pipe. ( I had a piece of PVC lined up but it didn't

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So as ideas and events came together. I needed anantenna on the roof, and I happily found one on theside of the road for free which worked great ( being abit bent and also at that time sitting on a metal roof. Iattempted to tie it to prevent drifting as possible).however we moved and now I had a more?challenging environment. so I picked up apreamplifier, which happened to have combininginputs. so while I was up on the roof for fun I grabbeda bowtie and some plastic wrap, and quite happilypicked up 15 digital channels that way.

After being up there for a few seasons "A". I hadmore time and a day to complete the project fully. "B".I had an intermittent fault in the cable. "C". i finally

the pipe. ( I had a piece of PVC lined up but it didn'tmake the move to the new house, in the end I optedfor a smaller diameter. so I'm happy with the outcomeanyway ).

I'm going to take a minute to stress that "KnivesAre Sharp" !!!!!!!!!!.

- and one minor injury, a cut to my finger. Which wasacquired in the process of removing the Balun fromits plastic enclosure.


Step 1: Prepare the Antenna / Make an Antenna.

So I picked up an antenna for $5 back when they soldthem at RadioShack. ( an consumer electronics storethat is a quarter of the size of a Best Buy, and alsofiled for bankruptcy in 2015. and has/hadcontroversial feelings in the quality of its materialsfrom many different groups of people. I personallyhave come to the conclusion that it was about 50/50depending on what was purchased. )

But you could easily make one and I'm sure there areplenty of ideas on this site alone. ( because I lookedat a lot of them). I also purchased a balancingtransformer and terminal strip when I was there.

Between the quick coat of acrylic spray paint andplastic wrap ( in this case it was red ), this workedquite well and allowed me to pick up stations 90°from where my antenna was pointing. that is until afault developed in the twin-lead cable, so I decided toput the original idea together and rather than

squishing everything into the tube. After finding outthe fault was in the cable, I decided to rip apart thetransformer and glue everything directly to theantenna, much like I saw elsewhere online.

And because I can and the fact that this is where ithappened…

I'm going to take a minute to stress that "KnivesAre Sharp" !!!!!!!!!!.- and one minor injury, a cut to my finger. Which wasacquired in the process of removing the balun from itsplastic enclosure.

There were actually 3 faults. two of which were ateach end of the cable, one at the transformer and oneon the antenna. The 3rd was the coax connector tothe transformer. so the whole thing needed to be tornapart to get under the plastic.


Step 2: Heat and the Band Pipe to a Fitting Shape.

I didn't take any pictures of this, but it's pretty simple.lay pipe on floor, Set heat gun to aim at the center,Turn on high, wait a while, press down.

I did this on a concrete floor and found out that itsucks the heat away, so try a different surface. alsothe pipe's static clings to all the dust and dirt on the

floor.

Once that is done, go through and make appropriateholes and attempt to figure out some sort ofmounting. I used a piece of insulated copper housewire.


Step 3: Combine Antenna and Pipe, to Make Antenna-pipe or Indoor / Outdoor Antenna.

Go through and make appropriate holes and attemptto figure out some sort of mounting. I used a piece ofinsulated copper house wire, and 1 hole on eitherside to do a picture frame type wire loop, and I threwa few on the bottom for ventilation and drainage incase moisture or water got in. And of course one forthe cable to connect.

I used an end of an old coax cable to hold theconnector, well I used hot glue around it to hold it inplace.I put a dab of hot glue at each corner of the antenna

to hold it to one side of the pipe and keep it fromwiggling and rattling.

I then took the plastic packaging that is hard to openand really annoying ( I save and recycle this stuff, asit is awesome once opened…. ). and cut 2 squaresout for each end and hot glued them on. I also gluedaround the wire hanger mechanism to prevent waterfrom coming in that way. once the glue was all driedand set up, I carefully cut around the plastic to matchthe shape of the pipe.




Step 4: Enjoying My Work After Installing on the Roof.

Say HI to the Kitty cat "TAT", Who I found on top ofthe chimney and most likely disrupting my highlysecure mounting mechanism(s).

This thing will pick up most stations if oriented in thecorrect direction, especially now that it's on the roof.combining this antenna with the bigger antennaallows me to pick up a couple stations 90° off of theother one. which means I have an antenna that picksup in 3 directions!

The next project I hope to do is replace the bigantenna with a copper pipe Gray Hoverman antennathat I will be making and some sort of Mount. if youfollow this link i am sure you will find a whole bunchof ideas > Gray Hoverman Antenna by unclesam I'mplanning to do something similar to that, but I want totry it as a one piece jig bent.

After finishing this project I was stumbling around onthe inter-webs and discovered somebody who hasreviewed a bunch of those flat antennas. much to mysurprise he uses the $5 RadioShack bowtie as acontrol and found that almost nothing could beat it,

which is probably why they stopped selling it.

After the preamp the cable runs down to thebasement and goes to the power injector and into adistribution amplifier and splitters. We have one LCDTV and a tube TV with converter box. I have anHDHomeRun and a Elgato Hybrid USB tuner.

The USB tuner/HDHomeRun are the best things I'veever done. there's nothing like wandering up to theroof with a laptop or ipad and adjusting the antenna(s)with the signal strength meters right in my hand andthen bounced to all the channels to check the quality.

I will try and answer questions in the commentsbelow, but it takes me a while to write stuff up/reply tothings.

Also this was my 1st published instructables ( it'sabout time, as I had the account for years now ). Ihave others that I need to do/ finish yet?


https://www.instructables.com/id/Gray-Hoverman-TV-Antenna-Active-Element-Copper-Lin/?ALLSTEPS


Step 5: An Update Y20181125

An update for the Date of Y20181125.still going strong, I've barely changed anything. theplastic end caps have fallen off and so I briefly had abees nest in their.

I need to add some updated pictures.

and I never mentioned the other antenna on the roofattached to the old satellite. don't buy that piece ofjunk, unless you need something that is extremelydirectional. although I was only able to get very fewchannels and only if I had it pointed exactly at them.plus the one I bought was defective and had 2xneutral polarized prongs on the cord's plug so I had tocut one of them to a hot polarized prong which thencaused the plastic holding the prong's to melt and meto ultimately replacing the entire cord.

I have both lost and gained channels due topartnerships, licensing and the FCC's free-for-allauctions that had a channel in Pennsylvania decideto sellout and move to a DC sub-channel. some newsub-channels moved in. I even had a Local news &NBC affiliate de-affiliated because the channel was

trying to get more viewers in DC and Comcastdecided now that they owned everything it was aduplicate in the DC market…. so I'm left with no OTAmajor network affiliates apart from ION and PBS's(and a sub of NHK-World). which ultimately led us togetting satellite through DirecTV.

and oh By the Way I'm hitting a different channel inPennsylvania WITF which is 2x states away!! ( If onlyI could consistently get West Virginia PBS ? IN WV ?). I was recently looking at a coverage map…. I amnot even close to the predicted line of signal drop off.which is a good thing as they added a subchannel ofFox and old tv shows on AntennaTV.

and TVFool.com has literally become my go to site forit's channel information.

the app "Signal GH" by generally helpful software (requires an HDHomeRun ) was totally worth theprice, i need to track down an equivalent androidversion yet.


having dramas with my tv reception and I'm not sure on the cause. You gave me an idea, and Idon't know why I haven't thought of it myself. my laptop has a tv aerial input, so would have tohave a tuner. I can use this to check the antennae.

Nice instructable. Thanks for putting this up. Might try making a bow tie antennae to go with myother failed home made antennae!

That is awesome, just be careful of the gravity factor ( as in laptop can slide off roof or worse ). ihave an iPad case with a handle to resist those types of issues?i usually use an iPad and VNC, not so good for live video but the signal meter works well that way.if I want to check the video I open up the Eyetv app that relays the video through the computer.with the HDhomerun there Is an app that will do the metering Directly that I have been looking atgetting.( UpDate Y181125 the app "Signal GH" by generally helpful software ( requires an HDHomeRun ) was totally worth the price, i need to track down an equivalent android version yet. )

now that I have the HDhomerun and not just a USB tuner, I have been spoiled by lack of wires andwhen I'm lazy i grab a Windows laptop and hobble up there to give things a jiggle.

yes dragging a laptop on to the roof is a whole lot easier than a 19 inch TV ( not that I was insaneenough to do that, although I have thought about the 13 and 9 inch'er's ), i wish I had thistechnology 15 years ago.

Funny stuff!! Our tv is a wee bit big to drag up. going to check out those programs you mentioned


This is a great way to make that indoor antenna safe for outdoor use. And congratulations on yourfirst instructable! It always make me happy to see long time viewers turn into authors! I'm excited tosee what else you end up sharing with all of us here in the community!

Thank you, I've been meaning to for a while. And much more other ideas floating around to.


Indoor / Outdoor Bowtie Antenna - Instructables

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