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Aluminum Foil On Rabbit Ears Revisited

While on vacation last fall, I took along an old UHF Bow-tie antenna, which I wanted to experiment with. While staying at a hotel in Las Vegas, the Smart TV did not have cable or master antenna. I plugged in my Bowtie to the antenna input and picked up nearly 40 channels, including numerous subchannels (Antenna TV, Bounce, Grit. etc) as well as the major local Network channels.

Same held true in Palm Springs. my resort had nice 50" Smart TVs but no cable or master antenna system, Again, my bow-tie was plugged in and there I received almost 20 channels from the Palm Springs stations. Of course, I was in direct sight of the transmitter site just north of PS on Edom Hill. But I was surprised at the amount of available off-the-air channels available.
 
rjoc said:
While on vacation last fall, I took along an old UHF Bow-tie antenna, which I wanted to experiment with. While staying at a hotel in Las Vegas, the Smart TV did not have cable or master antenna. I plugged in my Bowtie to the antenna input and picked up nearly 40 channels, including numerous subchannels (Antenna TV, Bounce, Grit. etc) as well as the major local Network channels.

Same held true in Palm Springs. my resort had nice 50" Smart TVs but no cable or master antenna system, Again, my bow-tie was plugged in and there I received almost 20 channels from the Palm Springs stations. Of course, I was in direct sight of the transmitter site just north of PS on Edom Hill. But I was surprised at the amount of available off-the-air channels available.
Click to expand...
Those old bowtie antennas aren't bad for what they are. That was the first kind of UHF antenna I had back in the 1970s. I don't care for the loop antennas (the ones that attach to both screws on a 300 ohm input) as you really can't adjust them, and they are right by the back of the receiver. You could clip the bowtie antenna to a rabbit ear and move it around as desired.
 
When Bowties first came out, there were 70 UHF channels, from 470-890 MHz, Channels 14-83. The band kept shrinking first to 14-69, then 14-51, and now 14-36, 23 channels, 470-608 MHz. You should be able to design a somewhat larger Bowtie antenna, taking into account the midrange of the frequencies now used.
 


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