High performance TV antenna from one piece of wire.. [View all]

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