Homemade HDTV

I felt like a real man the other day. We purchased one of those new digital converter boxes for our TV, but unfortunately the antenna in our apartment wouldn't pick up any digital signal (since it's a VHF antenna and pretty much all digital stuff comes in over UHF).

I went to good ol' Wally World to buy an indoor antenna that would work (more or less a plastic-coated, "cool-looking" set of rabbit ears). No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get any kind of signal...very annoying. I even tried (to no avail) standing outside and holding it in the air and/or touching it to various metal objects around the house.

I didn't want to buy a more expensive antenna or anything, so I decided to try building one! So, after collecting some supplies I created my new antenna (aka the "Redneck Antenna" or the "Man-tenna").

It works great! I can pick up way more channels than I could with that plastic piece of junk I bought. Plus it cost me almost nothing to build!

My next project is going to make 3 or 4 of them and wire them all together to make a massive array of Man-tennas in an attempt to get even more channels and better signal. I'll keep you posted.