Homemade TV Antenna

Here is a great home-education project with the kids. It isn't very spiritual, but God made us flesh and blood with a spirit, not spirit alone. (In fact, contrary to the 'earth-suit' thinking people, that's the way we'll wind up too: being spirit only is not our destiny in Christ. We can't be sure what the resurrection body will be exactly like, but we can be sure it is will be physical flesh and blood body just as Jesus had when He was resurrected and he grilled fish for breakfast and ate it with Peter and John et al. Harp or no harp, 'going to Heaven' is just a waystation on our journey. Now there's something spiritual for you I guess.)

We live on a heavily wooded hill in North Georgia some 50 miles from Chattanooga, the nearest source of broadcast TV. Over the years we have tried various antennae of different designs and expense, but always went back to a basic cheapie RCA rabbit ears design plugged into a signal amplifier. Didn't work that great but if you held your breath, didn't turn on the ceiling fan, and the weather was with you, you could get a half-decent signal most of the time. Eventually the old cheapie RCA got bombed by the BAF (that's the Baby Air Force: our nickname for all the mayhem wrought by our two and three year olds throughout each day). After that we used a semi-pricey Phillips powered rabbit ear design that our daughter found at a yard sale dirt cheap. It did work better, but not much really. We tried all kinds of nifty ideas we were sure would make it work better but never did, like aluminum foil balls and wire in various sorts and conditions.

Recently, I just got sick of it, and googled "make your own TV antenna."

Clicked on the first link I saw, here. This gives you a set of nifty plans in PDF format for making an antenna out of coat hangers and an old co-ax TV converter – you know the kind they used to hand out like candy that hooked up to old TVs with the two screws on the back? I expect you could get one at Radio Shack still, but we had one still hanging around. Used to be, if you bought a TV or anything that went with one, like a VCR, DVD player, game system or whatever it would come with one of those things.

Anyway, me and the two older boys looked over the plans, and then watched the video version here a couple of times. Then we got out the pliers and coat hangers and went to work. The whole time I kept asking them, "You think this thing'll actually do anything?"

You simply would not believe what this thing does. We have channels that we could never get before. We have channels that we could just barely get before (does anyone else out there know the utter frustration of having Rick Bayless blink out right at the crucial moment of the recipe just because your now-six-foot teenager unthinkingly stood in the wrong place?). And best of all, we have the most ridiculously strong signal strength on every single channel. I admit we did have to do a little fiddling around to find the right spot, but even in the wrong spot it way outperformed the semi-pricey Phillips powered rabbit ears. I mean, left it choking in the dust.

Neat.

Now if TV would just get saved...