Can You Build a Working Ham Radio Antenna from Garage Junk? We Tried

Every ham has asked the question at some point: "If everything went sideways, could I build a working HF antenna from whatever junk is in the garage?" It's a fun thought experiment right up until the day you really do need an emergency ham radio antenna and the only thing you can find is Christmas light wire, a random toroid, and a set of dusty TV rabbit ears.

That "what if" turned into a full-on experiment in our Broken Signal junk-box antenna challenge. Two experienced operators got 30 minutes, a box of random garage parts, and one simple goal: make real contacts using a junk box antenna. No careful modeling, no perfect hardware, just improvisation, RF knowledge, and a lot of electrical tape.

This behind-the-scenes companion article walks through the entire challenge: the rules, the chaos, the designs, and how these improvised ham radio antennas actually played on the air. If you're into POTA, emergency communications, or just love seeing RF abused in interesting ways, this one's for you.

Before we dig into the designs, let's set the stage for the challenge and meet the brave souls who agreed to risk their reputations on a box of literal trash.

The Premise: Could This Really Work in an Emergency?

The idea behind the "Will It Antenna?" garage junk challenge was simple: treat the garage like an emergency supply locker. Imagine you've got a functioning radio, but your main antenna just snapped in a storm, you're away from home, or you're helping in a real disaster deployment and your gear didn't make the trip.

You pop open the garage and see… not a tidy shelf of neatly labeled ham radio parts, but the usual mix of old electronics, cable scraps, odd insulators, and mystery hardware. The question becomes very real very quickly:

• Can you pull enough usable RF parts out of the mess?
• Can you assemble them into a tunable, reasonably efficient radiator?
• Can you do it in a short time window while people are waiting on comms?

We wanted to explore that in a way that was honest and a little bit chaotic. Enter two friends who both know their way around an antenna—but with very different styles.

Meet the Contestants

John, NJ4Z — Professional Antenna Wrangler

John (NJ4Z) is the guy you bring in when you want your RF to behave. He's an antenna professional and the owner of Performance Zays, which means he spends a lot of time turning math, modeling, and ferrite dust into antennas that actually work.

In this challenge, John is playing slightly out of his natural environment. He's used to planning and precision; here, he has a mystery toroid, short wire, and a plastic box that doesn't quite fit the connector he wants to use. Watching a pro fight the limitations of bad hardware is half the entertainment.

Matthew, W1MRC — Experimenter and ARRL SC Section Leader

On the other side is Matthew Crook, W1MRC, ARRL South Carolina Section Leader and full-time tinkerer. He's the kind of operator who will absolutely look at TV rabbit ears and say, "Yeah, we can make that work."

Matthew's strength is creative problem solving. He's not afraid to try odd combinations of parts if it means getting on the air faster. That mindset is perfect for emergency ham radio antenna work, where "good enough right now" often beats "perfect but not ready."

The Box of Mystery Parts

No good junk-box challenge starts with neat, labeled hardware. The parts for this build came from one very scientific source: "whatever was lying around the garage."

Inside the box:

• A toroid core that might be the right mix (nobody's quite sure).
• Random lengths of wire, including Christmas light wire and speaker wire.
• A coil and assorted insulators.
• An SO-239 or two, a small project box, and some hardware that almost fits together.
• A lightning arrestor, some coax jumpers, and yes—TV rabbit ears.

What was missing is just as important:

• No hamsticks, no pre-tuned mobile whips.
• No neatly wound 1:1 current balun in a weatherproof enclosure.
• No labeled ferrite mixes or cut-to-frequency radiators.

In other words, it was exactly like the junk you'd find in most garages: useful in theory, annoying in practice.

Rules of the "Will It Antenna?" Competition

To keep things fair (and interesting), the challenge followed a simple set of rules:

1. Draft from the box: The operators took turns picking parts from the junk box. No hoarding everything cool on the first grab.
2. Part count: Each antenna had to use at least three parts and up to five, so nobody could just throw up a bare piece of wire and call it done.
3. Build time: 30 minutes to design and build the antenna. If it's not together by then, too bad.
4. Operating time: 30 minutes on the air with that antenna, making as many contacts as possible.
5. Scoring:
   • +1 point for each band worked.
   • Creativity and craziness: 1–5 points based on how inventive (or unhinged) the design is.
   • SWR score:
     • 1.5:1 or better to 2:1 — 0 points (excellent is just "normal" here).
     • 2:1 to 3:1 — –2 points.
     • 3:1 and above — –5 points.
   • Operating score: +1 point per contact, +2 if it's DX.

The scoring forced a balance between usable performance and creative insanity. A boring-but-good antenna and a wild science project both had paths to victory.

Design Breakdown: Two Very Different Junk Box Antennas

John's (NJ4Z) Rybakov-Style Vertical from Christmas Lights and a Toroid

John went straight for what looked like the most serious RF component in the entire box: the toroid core. He paired it with a pre-existing box, some wire, and speaker wire radials to build something recognizable to many HF operators: a Rybakov-style vertical.

His core design choices:

• Radiator: About 25 feet of wire pressed into service as a vertical element.
• Feed system: A 4:1 Guanella balun built on the mystery toroid, taped and wedged into a project box that didn't really want to cooperate.
• Radials: Several lengths of speaker wire laid out as elevated or ground radials—some at 17 ft, some shorter thanks to running out of wire.
• Mounting: The whole thing set up as a vertical HF antenna, with the balun and feedpoint near the ground.

There were some classic junk-box problems: the SO-239 didn't quite fit the box, solder access was terrible, and the balun ended up taped in place instead of properly bolted. But continuity checked out, and RF doesn't care how pretty your solder joints are as long as the electrons have a path.

Matthew's (W1MRC) Rabbit-Ears Vertical Hybrid

Matthew took one look at the TV rabbit ears and saw not a dead relic of analog television, but a tunable vertical radiator. Paired with a small coil, some coax, and a questionable "ground system," his antenna became a kind of loaded vertical / hybrid contraption aimed at multiband operation.

His design elements:

• Radiator: Old-school TV rabbit ears, extendable and independently adjustable, used as the main radiating element.
• Loading coil: A compact air-core coil to electrically lengthen the radiator for lower bands.
• Ground/radials: Coax, stray metal objects, and available wire pressed into service as a marginal ground system.
• Mounting: Whatever metal structure was nearby—grill, table, tie rods—became part of the support and, in some ways, part of the antenna.

It wasn't pretty, but that wasn't the point. The design leaned heavily on the "any conductor is better than no conductor" school of emergency antenna building.

Build Commentary: Chaos, Improvisation, and "That Might Actually Work…"

The build phase looked a lot like what happens on a picnic table at Field Day when someone says, "I've got an idea," and everyone else slowly backs away.

On John's (NJ4Z) side, the main battle was mechanical:

• The SO-239 wouldn't mount cleanly in the selected box.
• Soldering the SO-239 became a challenge due to cutting things shorter than planned.
• The balun wires had to be taped and strain-relieved instead of properly bolted—definitely not a "production" build.

Matthew W1MRC’s build looked like a live-action masterclass in creative improvisation with whatever parts were on hand:

• The rabbit ears ended up on the coil and taped to radiate.
• He experimented with different coil tap points and rabbit-ear lengths to find something close to resonance.
• Ground options included coax shield, nearby metal, and anything he could physically clip to without breaking the setup.

There were plenty of "this will never work" comments, but also a lot of quietly serious RF reasoning: turn spacing on the coil, current paths, common-mode concerns, and the eternal question of "what exactly is radiating here?"

Performance on the Air: Junk Box Antenna, Real Contacts

Once the clocks started on the operating phase, theory stepped aside and reality took over. The antennas were placed on the air from a Parks on the Air (POTA) site, where the only thing that really matters is whether someone comes back to your call.

Matthew (W1MRC) fired first, running his rabbit-ears vertical hybrid on HF. Despite the questionable ground and unusual radiator, he managed to pull off real contacts, including a local station who gave him a workable—but not exactly booming—signal report. The antenna was noisy and a little finicky, but it did the one thing that matters: it radiated.

John's (NJ4Z) Rybakov vertical, once deployed and debugged, acted a lot more like a "real" HF vertical. With the wire in the air and the radials laid out, he started calling CQ and quickly accumulated contacts, including:

• Solid POTA contacts with good readability.
• A memorable QSO where he explained he was running a junk box antenna built from Christmas lights and a toroid.
• At least one DX contact, earning those extra challenge points.

Audio reports were surprisingly positive given the improvised nature of the antennas. This wasn't high-gain, perfectly modeled performance, but nothing about it sounded like a total disaster either. From the other side of the contact, most people would never guess how bad the parts bin looked.

Final Scoring and the Winner

When the smoke (figuratively) cleared and the last CQ was logged, the scores shook out like this:

• Matthew (W1MRC): 8 points total.
• John (NJ4Z): 18 points total.

Matthew's rabbit-ears vertical scored well on creativity and pulled in enough contacts to prove the concept: yes, you can make real POTA contacts on an antenna cobbled together from TV parts and a coil.

John's Rybakov vertical took the overall win by combining:

• Usable SWR after some troubleshooting.
• Multiple bands and solid on-air performance.
• Reliable, repeatable contacts that made it feel more like a "real" antenna than an experiment.

In the end, it wasn't just a contest between two hams—it was a practical demonstration that a few good RF principles can turn almost any pile of junk into a functioning station.

What This Means for Emergency and Portable Operators

It's fun to laugh at taped-up baluns and rabbit ears strapped to a grill, but there's a serious lesson hiding in the background: you don't need perfect hardware to pass traffic.

For emergency ham radio antenna work, POTA activations, or spur-of-the-moment deployments, the junk-box challenge highlighted a few key ideas:

• Wire is gold. Any decent length of insulated copper can become a radiator, radial, or counterpoise.
• Ferrites are force multipliers. A single toroid can become a balun, unun, or choke when you understand basic turns ratios.
• Ground and counterpoise matter. A marginal ground system will "work,"but investing effort there pays real dividends in efficiency and noise performance.
• Don't fear ugly builds. If it's mechanically safe and electrically sound, the other station can't see your tape job.

You don't need to rebuild this exact challenge in your driveway, but you might want to take one weekend and purposely build an improvised ham radio antenna using only what you already own. Better to discover the gaps in your junk box now than during an ice storm.