The Porcupine Antenna

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This antenna was an extension of an idea I had back in 2002, and had an article published about the precursor antenna in Popular Communications, in January 2003: “Phil’s Easy Way To Improve Your UHF TV Reception.”

The next article published shows this antenna completely as I still use it today. This article was published in Popular Communications, February 2013, pp 10-16 and titled, “An Omnidirectional DTV Antenna – With Gain! * Here’s a Turnstile-Bowtie-Gain Configuration You Can Build.”

The original antenna, back in 2003, was simply two bowtie antennas at 90 degrees from each other. The “Four Element Turnstile-Bowtie” antenna (or as my wife named it, the “Porcupine” antenna) is four sets of these two antennas, see the images below.

The Porcupine Antenna being tested:

Mounted on the house above our kitchen:

The instructions for building one of these is on my web site at: Build the Porcupine Antenna

There is another link on the above page to comments and further extensions of the antenna from four sections to eight and then to 12 sections by Bob Oshel with his comments and photos.

While I can’t yet say how well this antenna receives in all directions, I can say that, in my experience, it does rather well in all directions. I can receive stations from east (Baltimore MD), south (Washington D.C.), and from the west (Frederick, MD). I could run some further experiments from a clear spot and simply rotate the antenna to test for signal level fluctuations due to direction. I fully expect that there will be some variations, but no idea of their extent.

Try building one and leave your comments here about how it has worked, or not worked.