It was situated in a steel building and radio reception inside was non-existent. When I was in college, I worked in a retail electronics store. Switched on, and I had to turn the volume down. Switched off, and a station was barely audible. The first time I made one of these antenna systems, I added a small switch in series with the ground connection. You may have to twist and turn the radio, and move it closer or farther away, but stations that were weak and scratchy will leap out at you. Turn your radio on, select 'AM' and set it near the coil. Take the rest of the wire and run it out the window and tie it to something (keep it high enough not to strangle somebody who walks by) or else tie a fishing sinker or big hex nut on the end and chunk it up a tree. Tape it to the wall, or to a piece of cardboard propped against the wall. Run the wire to where you want your radio to be situated and make a coil of six turns, about the diameter of a saucer. The center screw of an electrical receptacle (or one of the screws on a light switch) would work fine. The first thing you do is to connect one end of the wire (strip the insulation off) to some type of ground. It is very small in diameter but pretty strong. An ideal size would be a piece of either doorbell or telephone wire - just one conductor. The wire doesn't have to be very large in diameter. (Radio signals don't care if the wire is insulated or not.) Fifty feet would be oodles. The easy way is to buy (or otherwise locate) a length of insulated wire. The hard way is to buy bare antenna wire with a couple of insulators for either end and mount that. You can go to a lot of trouble or not - it's up to you. If not, five bucks ought to do it.įirst, as in the old days, you need a long wire antenna. There are three parts to this antenna system, and if you are an adept scrounger, it won't cost you anything.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |