The famed bowtie Antennas Direct DB2 bowtie antenna is selling for $37.92 at Amazon.com with free shipping. This is a UHF antenna. Usually, this sells for $40+ on Amazon.com and $50 retail so I thought this was a pretty decent deal. Yes, I know you can try to make your own bowtie antenna, but for those who don't have the time and materials readily available, this is all ready to go and doesn't cost that much.

It's small enough to be used indoors. I have one myself and although it's not amplified, it works better than any other amplified antennas I've tried from my local retail stores. I'm able to pickup pretty much all the digital channels in my area with this whereas with other types of antennas, I couldn't many of them.

http://www.Amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000EHUE7I

I built a home-made one, and it worked better than the DB2. I bought a DB2 and DB4 to try them out (through Best Buy, no shipping and free returns) and my homemade one with coat hanger wire worked better.

Moreover, I've seen the DB2 for 34 dollars shipped from Amazon before, so price does fluctuate.

nice price

hellyea81 said:I built a home-made one, and it worked better than the DB2. I bought a DB2 and DB4 to try them out (through Best Buy, no shipping and free returns) and my homemade one with coat hanger wire worked better.

Moreover, I've seen the DB2 for 34 dollars shipped from Amazon before, so price does fluctuate.Where did you find the UHF antenna plans you used for yours?

also:
I went on a quest to find this Ace Hardware $26 DB4 found nothing on the regular ACE website (they don't carry everything online that they do in their B&M stores)
but did find one @ Ace Hardware outlet (a glorified B&M Ace in NYC that sells alot of their stuff online)
$25.59 + 6.75 shipping to PA Phillips version of the DB4
unfortunately there aren't many details about it.

After researching a bit more it looks like the Channel Master 4221 8bay would be the best bang (or signal) for your buck (especially if you can find a place with free or cheap shipping) amazon link

havier123 said:i can verify that the home made antenna works as good as a store bought antenna. i have a terk $100 antenna that i bought at BB, and i replaced it with the home made one which i'm still using right now.

I think that is mainly because the $100 Terk is a cr@pola antenna . I have the 4 bay Channel Master which I picked up locally for about $24. The 8 bay is basically this doubled and is a NICE antenna but has a very narrow "beam width". Most folks do report good results with the DB2 if they live where signals are quite strong. A "Silver Sensor" can also work well in thos areas but not quite as good as the much less attractive DB2 .

Everyone should keep in mind that come February when analog TV ceases to broadcast many of the stations will switch their digital transmissions to their current analog frequencies. In my area this means several will be back on VHF and no long on UHF - so a new antenna / antenna array will be needed to get all the stations. There is an FCC document you can search to find out what will happen in your area, as all the stations have already had to make their new channel choices. I will post a link when I have time to dig it out.

Dennis

traderjoe said:DB2 Equivalent from Amazon with Free Shipping and $12 less here :)

Nice find if really an equivalent to the DB2 - which has been tested against other popular UHF antennas.

Dennis

hellyea81 said:I built a home-made one, and it worked better than the DB2. I bought a DB2 and DB4 to try them out (through Best Buy, no shipping and free returns) and my homemade one with coat hanger wire worked better.

Moreover, I've seen the DB2 for 34 dollars shipped from Amazon before, so price does fluctuate.

hi, How did you made this work? I followed the same video awhile ago, and it didn't work at all, can you send me the link or picture of the one that you made?

what uhf/vhf transformer u used?
The one which I used was 300-ohm to 75-ohm matching transformer with 21k gold plated connectors

the RadioShack part # was 15-1230

and that didn't work at all, I was able to catch a little reception but it was so distorted that I finally took that out.