McDuory UHD-3968 Outdoor Yagi TV Antenna

Working good in my attic

I bought this McDuory antenna a year ago and it’s been in operation since March of 2025. I have it in my attic and can pick up stations where the transmitter tower is 50 miles away. It’s very directional. Just a few degrees difference in aim and I would lose that station but then my local stations would have higher signal strength. So it took some experimenting to get the ideal aim but I have it. I don’t know if I would put this particular antenna outside. It’s not super heavy duty. Also you have to push in each element into the body of the antenna until it clicks. I actually put some silicon sealant on my elements just around the area where the elements contact the plastic holder before I inserted them. Not on the actual metal where it’s hidden once the elements are in place. I didn’t want to interfere with the electrical connection of the elements. So all in all if you can put this in your attic away from wind and whatever mother nature can throw at it I’d say it’s a good antenna for the price.

Missing parts/duplicate parts

I have used this same product before so I ordered for a new house. It came with duplicate parts #2 and missing #1

Sadly my install is scheduled for today, so everyone has wasted time and money

Still Works in Tropical Weather

Good value got money. I bought two of the Yagi TV antennas for use in the Caribbean recently. One as a gift, and the other for my personal use. It has been a month now and I can see that the antenna works very well and it can withstand tropical weather. I used my antenna outdoors during Hurricane Melissa to keep updated. I have uploaded pictures and videos

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Works very well

This simple low cost antenna actually works very well. We installed ours in the attic and now receive over 100 channels in Las Vegas. Great deal.

Can be used in police scanner applications.

This long periodic antenna is an excellent choice for a scanner radio receiver. It’s a great antenna, and its size is perfect. The installation was also very easy. It’s very lightweight and can be turned vertically to be used as a radio receiver.

Good value, well designed, works great!

Good value for money, good electrical and mechanical design.

Be aware that this is made from light materials which is fair for the price.

Note that if this is installed in the weather (rain etc), you may want to grease all of the electrical joins with penetrox joint compound -- This includes the boom brackets (the booms form the feed/phase connections between the elements - note how they are alternated), and the galvanized screws. For the screws I carefully removed them, applied a dab penetrox joint compound, when tightening the screws again max 1/4 gentle turn once the slack is taken up. I applied some compound to the ends of the longer elements that are inserted into the brackets. Seal the plastic coax connection cover where meets the boom with some lanocote, and around the coax F connector to protect it from water/rain. Doing this will make this antenna last a number of years longer!

The electrical design is tried and true, this is called a LPDA (Log Periodic Dipole Array). These are broad-banded directional antennas that are also directly matched to coax (75 ohm for TV). Simple and works well.

It comes with all the hardware needed, and is of good quality.

For us, all local stations upto 25 miles away on RF channels 9 through 26 are 100% signal level.

For what this is, and the price, this is easily 5 stars.

I recommend it for local and medium range.

Reception. Report

Just recieved today. Jan 19 th. 2025

bit hard. to put together but finally got it together. 60 miles away from nyc 9 stories high. bridgeport Connecticut. area..concreate building

recieve all imporrant channels needed

2 cbs. 4 nbc 5 fox. 21pbs. 30 nbc abc new haven ct. wmbc 63 68 67 wzme 43 1 43.3 43.4

cozi metv metv toons METV + fox weather dabl comet

outlaw ch 48 pbs 49 depend on direction pointed pbs 24 65 .north of my area 40 miles away. ...catchy comedy. pax 31 LAFF GRIT GET TBD QUEST CW 20.4

verry sensitive antenna each location differs

trees weather. buildings. excedra. but decent antenna

WORTHY TO BUY

Poor design

Bad design and poor quality control. The longer pieces are supposed to push in and have a friction fit. Some won't go in and many others go in without any resistance. This thing will fall apart easily.

Great Antenna!

Managable size. Light weight. Easy to install. Great picture quality. Solid product.

Small foot print big performance

This Antenna is smaller than I expected, but the reception is great. An attic installation was required due to a HOA rule so the size worked out great. It is about 38 miles to Antenna site.

Great Price and worth the cost.

I have tried various indoor antennas. The best was a Channel Master flat antenna with amplifier. The best location inside my home could pick up 38 channels. That flat antenna is 13.5 inches Wide by 9.75 inches high. I am just under 40 miles from the transmitters in Chicago. Pretty good performance for a very small indoor antenna.

Compare that with my new antenna which now picks up 89 chancels. This antenna has a 33 inch boom length and the maximum width of 34 inches. It is an Outdoor antenna, but I have attached it to the ceiling inside my home with some duct tape and facing a window in direction of the broadcasting towers in Chicago. Keep in mind, this installation is only about 8.5 feet above the ground.

NOW IT IS TIME TO CUT THE CABLE. I am very pleased and find this antenna a great value for the money.

Works great, 86 channels in the middle of nowhere

We went from zero channels with amplified indoor antennas to 86 channels with this thing. Went together easy, installed it on an existing satellite dish bracket. We are 70 miles from TV towers, just pointed it towards civilization and it was good to go.

It works great and I get more channels

Easy to put together and smaller so takes up less space and works better then the big one I replaced

Very cheap antenna

It works. However, the item that I received could not be assembled per specification, and I believe this affects the overall performance. The adjacent bits should be interspersed. However, there are two of them that are at the same level. It can only be assembled that way, and this is wrong.

Overall, it is made of very soft and thin aluminum, and many items have dents already, just out of the box. It is very flimsy, and I am not sure about its outdoor durability. It may be easily damaged by wind, ice, and snow. It also has plastic parts, although the description states that it does not.

Great antenna!!

I installed this for my father in law and he must have thanked me ten times. He had a small antenna on his wall indoors and he couldn't even pick up all the local channels. Once we installed this one, he was picking up 140 digital channels, including all of the locals. I would recommend this for sure!

NO BALUN (and no easy way to connect one)

This antenna is cheap is every sense of the word. It's both flimsy and difficult to assemble. The amount of force required to push the longer dipoles into the booms makes is easy to bend them.

Those are minor issues, though, compared to its lack of a proper balun, or an easy way to attach one.

I've learned quite a bit about antennas over the last 2 weeks, as I've tried to troubleshoot a reception issue with one particular channel. If I had known what I know now when I purchased this antenna, I never would bought it.

TL;DR - A log periodic (not Yagi!) antenna like this provides a balanced feed; the signals (probably the wrong word) coming from the two booms (the horizontal bits that attach to the mast) are supposed to mirror each other. OTOH, the coaxial cable used to connect the antenna to our televisions is an unbalanced feed; one of the connectors (the outer shield) is grounded, and the center conductor carries the signal. (I'm sure that's oversimplified and probably incorrect, but you get the idea.)

The key point is that a balanced feed should be connected to an unbalanced feed with a balun (which comes from BALanced/UNbalanced). If you look at other log periodic antennas (such as the RCA), you will se a little "dongle" hanging down to which the coaxial feed line is attached. This is the balun, and it's conspicuously absent on this antenna.

And just to be extra irritating, it's almost impossible to find a balun with F-type connectors on both ends, because baluns are supposed to be connected to balanced feeds, so it's pretty much impossible to salvage this thing by adding the balun that it should already have.

Before a bunch of people jump on this to say that this antenna works for them, a log periodic antenna can work without a balun, IF it is receiving a strong signal, and its feed line isn't subject to too much RF noise.

Lesson learned.

Works Exactly As Expected

This little antenna tuned 60+ crystal clear channels - while laying on top of the garbage bin! Once I properly installed and pointed it, the signal strength only improved - with some broadcast stations giving a full 5 bars on my Roku TV. I hijacked the cable box on the outside of the house and plugged the antenna directly into the house coaxial and it tunes on both TV's perfectly. I ditched my satellite provider and subscribed to a streaming service for $35 - not keeping Dish for $80 a month. This antenna tunes the 'local channels' your cable or satellite TV provider charges you up $12 a month for.

Awesome customer service. Sets the example.

Originally received antenna. Put it together and some of the elements did not want to click into place like they should have. Also one of the holes did not line up when i put it together and had to drill one of the holes bigger. Sent an e-mail to customer service and explained what happened along with some pictures. They sent me a new antenna no questions asked and it worked perfectly as advertised. This customer service department should be the example for others to follow. Very happy and pleased with them. Did not even have to send the old antenna back. Will be doing business with them on the future if I need to.

Great value, works perfectly, I love it.

Best antenna EVER! This is my 4th different brand and last antenna I will ever need because it is great. I now get about 180 channels. Keep in mind about 120 of those are because of my Samsung smart TV. But, 60 are over the air baby. All the network channels are perfect. All FREE. We live about 18 miles away from the towers. Super simple to install. Great value. Yes I am a real guy writing a real review.

Great Performance for the Price!

With its dual boom design and placement of the elements, all elements are ‘cross phased’ making each one active. I like this very clever design (electromagnetically).

Just setting it on the bush just outside my garage, it picked up 60 channels! Can't wait to see how it performs at about 30 feet up!

I highly recommend this to anyone wanting to get better performance from antenna.

Just what I needed to cut the cord.

Package arrived just as promised. Came in original box, packaged well. Assembly took maybe 10 minutes. I fed the out put line into a three way splitter that feeds 3 TV,s in my house. Did a trail run just holding it and pointing it towards the broadcast towers (down loaded a free app that locates your signal source) I then mounted it on my roof/ eve again pointed to the tower. Plenty of cable with some left over. Picked up 30 + channels including ABC CBS NBC FOX and PBS plus others a may never watch but thats OK. Now I just need to paint my eves! Very pleased and so happy I was able to tell the cable company to take a hike money grabbing petunias.