How to Increase Cell Phone Bars

Getting caught without any reception for your cell phone is a frustrating experience. Creating a home-made antenna, which connects to the external antenna port on your cell phone, is a great way to ensure that you always have bars when you need them. Making your own antenna doesn't require any special electronic skills and can be completed in mere minutes.

Things You'll Need

• Insulated wire
• Metric ruler
• Wire cutters
• Wooden skewer

Instructions

1. Cut a 20-centimeter piece of insulated wire, using the ruler to measure the exact distance.

2. Bend the wire at a right angle, five centimeters from one end of the wire, creating an "L" shape.

3. Wrap the 15-centimeter length of wire around the skewer five times, as close to the right-angled bend as possible, then pull the skewer free of the wire, leaving you with a small coil near the bend.

4. Pull gently on the wire to spread the coils of the wire, so there are approximately three millimeters between each coil.

5. Bend the final two centimeters of the 15-centimeter end at a right angle, in the opposite direction of the five-centimeter bend.

6. Strip the insulation from the last centimeter of the two-centimeter bend using the wire cutters.

7. Insert the stripped portion of the wire into your phone's exterior antenna port.

References

• How to Boost Your Phone Signal