DIY guide to cutting the cable with style

A genius and stylish way to get free television

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Hey you! Is that a cable box over there on your TV stand? You are doing. It. Wrong. The latest and greatest in television innovation is to take all that fancy technology and throw it right the heck out of the window! The cool kids call it cutting the cable and it usually involves a lot of time on the phone being transferred to different departments that try to keep you chained to your cable provider with enticing offers. Then it’s off to your local electronics store for an ugly hunk-of-plastic antenna that costs too much and works too poorly. Well I say no more! I am here to free you from the shackles of both your cable provider and Big Antenna. What you’ll find below is a guide for creating a basic omnidirectional antenna with a few common household supplies that will cost you less than $10 and, with the proper placement, get you all the major broadcast channels assuming your house is in range. You might even receive some of those stations that re-air classic movies and shows. Now, just like The Jeffersons, we’re ditching the Bunkers and movin’ on up!

Don’t get me wrong, this thing is ugly by itself, but I’ve got the ultimate secret that can turn it into a work of fine art!

Before you get all crazy with the scissors, check to make sure you’ve got a few local station transmitters within range of your house. There are plenty of websites out there such as Antennaweb.org (https://www.antennaweb.org/Address) where you can put in your zip code and see which stations you can reasonably expect to tune in. You’ll also want to make sure your TV has a built-in digital tuner. Pretty much any TV made after 2007 should have one. The good news is, this is so cheap to make that even if you end up failing miserably, you’re only out a few bucks and some coat hangers.

What you’ll need:

Wood Board – The cheaper the better. Mine was a rough-sawn 1x4 cedar fence picket I picked up at a big box store for less than a dollar. Final length is about 25” but you’ll want to leave some extra length to help with fitting the final mounting. You might have something already lying around that will work as long as it’s roughly the right size. Thinner is better for the final low-profile effect. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be wood! As long as it’s non-conductive and can hold a screw, plastic could even work!

Screws & Washers – They should be shorter than the thickness of your board and don’t need to be heavy duty by any means. I’ve even seen this done with nails. It all comes down to conductivity. Screws help for tighter long-lasting connections and ensure good contact. Use whatever you have lying around as long as you have 10 of them.

Wire – Here’s where you can spend or save a ton of money. I used 14 gauge solid copper wire I had left over from another project. It can cost you around $10 for a spool with more than you’ll ever need OR you can save the maximum amount with a few plain old wire coat hangers. If they’re painted, you’ll just have to sand off the paint at the contact points for a proper connection. Diff’rent Strokes for different folks.

UHF/VHF Transformer – Also known as a balun, this is the piece that connects your home-made antenna to the standard threaded category 5 cable. That’s the little guy that has screwed into the back of your TV since time immemorial. This is the only required purchase you probably don’t already have lying around your house or garage, luckily you can harness your inner Columbo and find them only for less than 5 bucks. I got mine from a now-defunct “shack” where certain “radio” components were once sold.

 

A UHF/VHF Transformer, but call it a balun because you'll never remember the other name.

 

Tools:

Drill with basic bit set

Handsaw

Pliers

Wire cutters

Electrical Tape

Measuring Tape

Pencil

Safety Glasses

 

So let’s get down to brass tacks, or in this case, zinc screws. First you’ll want to mark out the design on your piece of wood. Using the photo below, you’ll want to use a pencil to mark a set of holes every 6” down each side with roughly 2 ½” between each pair. Mark for 8 holes, then a set that lives halfway between the middle marks. To avoid confusion and stick to a theme we’ll call these holes George and Weezie. Go ahead and pre-drill all the holes slightly smaller than the screws you have. This will keep your cheapo hunk of wood from splitting. In a perfect world, all this ugliness will be covered up or hidden in an attic in the final step, so don’t worry too much about it looking pretty. You can go ahead and thread in your screws and washers now, but don’t tighten them down, we still need to tuck some wires under each one, so leave space.

 

Diagram 1 featuring George and Weezie.

 

Next take your wire and if you’re using solid insulated wire as I did, it’s time to strip. I’m going to just leave that joke where it lies. If you’re using coat hangers, pull them apart and straighten them out as much as possible. You’ll need 8 pieces of wire, 14” on the nose, straightened out and stripped of insulation. Then cut 2 long pieces of wire roughly 25” apiece. You may want to leave the insulation on these two, and only cut it away where it makes contact with the screws. If you’re using a coat hanger, you’ll have to add some strategically placed electrical tape in the next step.

 

Take your 14” wires, find the center and bend them in half, but don’t make it a sharp bend. For the final look you’ll want the ends 3” apart as seen in the photo. Put each V on one of the top four and bottom 4 screws, leaving our favorite dry cleaning magnates (George and Weezie) un-veed. Next, take your long strands of wire and, starting on the top screws, strip off sections of insulation where needed to make clean contact with each screw it passes. Following the pattern, run the long wires down, crisscrossing between the first and last sets of screws. Here is where you’ll need to add insulation if it’s not already on your wire. Wrap each wire with electrical tape where they overlap each other. These wires can’t touch…or else! If your wire is already insulated, you’re off the hook. Congrats. You don’t need to wrap the wire around the screws, it just needs to run past them underneath the washer and make contact. Once the wires are run according to the example and the insulation is stripped or added where needed, you can go ahead and tighten the whole thing down except for The Jeffersons.

 

Here's that diagram again, with the return of George and Weezie.

 

Next, we’ll attach our balun/UHF/VHF Transformer. One wire lead connects to George and the other to Weezie. Place the lead under the screw in contact with the wire and tighten it down. You’re now only steps away from classic TV heaven! Follow the pictures and you should be fine. Check your spacing and angles on the Vs. They should resemble 4 “bow-ties” at this point. That’s about it. You can attach this to your TV using a standard CAT 5 cable to the ANT IN port, sometimes also labeled TV, or CABLE. It’s the screw thing on the back of your TV. You’ll have to run the channel scan function in the menu of your TV so it knows which channels to look for, and voila! You should see over-the-air TV in all its glory. Now quick, check to see if Mama’s Family is on MeTV.

 

If you’re not seeing any channels, you might need to tweak the placement. As I said, this thing is ugly, so the higher up it is, and closer to an outside wall, the better the reception and the easier it will be to hide. Stick it in the attic if you can and see if reception improves.

 

Find someone tech-savvy who can help you with this next part. I don’t recommend you do the following thing unless you are VERY confident in your skills. It’s never EVER smart to cut into random wires in your attic. I am not smart. I went into my attic, cut into a run of existing CAT 5, terminated either end of the cut, and ran both ends into a splitter. Then fed my new antenna into that. There’s a bit of signal chasing and re-routing to get the signal running correctly to the rest of the house, and on longer runs the signal will degrade a bit but I’m not too picky. It’s free TV man! M*A*S*H marathons, Matlock, My Three Sons!

 

If hiding it in the attic isn’t an option, the form factor of this antenna offers a solution that I haven’t seen used anywhere else and will truly give you a deluxe apartment in the sky…this is the secret tip you’ve been waiting for. That or you just scrolled to the bottom you cheater. Shame on you.

 

 

Mount your antenna behind a painting! Wrapped canvas frames are the easiest as there’s a deeper cavity behind them than a standard wood and glass picture frame. I custom built my wood frame to the size and depth I wanted. Then I decided to get a bit snarky with the design I had printed on the canvas to cover it with. What do you think? Totally meta right?

 

The antenna is mounted to the frame with some angle brackets. This is another spot where you can spend as much or as little money as you want and find yourself an actual nice piece of art to use. Hit your local Salvation Army or Goodwill store or get crafty with some paints of your own. The print I had made with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek was around $20. As a bonus, this design means I don’t need to hide the cable running into the back of my TV. You can just as easily hide the cable by running it inside the wall itself (the print even covers the hole!) or putting it in what’s called a plastic cable raceway. You can find them in colors that blend nicely into your wall.

 

The print that I made. I call it "Tongue in Cheek." It's flipped over so you don't have to see it.

 

I haven’t found that mounting it this way has affected it noticeably. Again, the more walls and stuff between the signal and your antenna, the worse your reception. But all-told, a bit of canvas should have a negligible effect.

 

There you have it! Crystal clear high quality over-the-air television with a couple coat hangers and some screws. Go nuts, get creative, and don’t say I never did you any favors!

 

If you want more DIY content like this, let us know down in the comments section. While you’re at it, check out the rest of what 1D4 has to offer . From pop-culture to nerd-culture to Culture Club even…maybe. 1D4 is the laid-back side of ClickOnDetroit where you can be yourself and learn a thing or two!