Home Made Antenna

Here is an antenna idea I thought pretty cool. The wife and I have a couple of radio's but are not HAM operators. Only intent is to listen. What do you folks think of this idea? I thought it was pretty outside the box and maybe a good idea for a quick and dirty antenna and very portable.

 

Yeah, definitely a great idea, keeps the wire stowed out of the way. I also just use mine for just listening on a small AM - SW set. I carry about 30' of #20 magnet wire in a baggie, keeps it untangled and stowed away. Tie a stick to one end and toss it over a tree limb, then wrap 6 turns around the exterior of my radio parallel to the internal loopstick antenna for AM, or wrapped around the antenna for SW. Leave a few feet to run to a metal tent stake, nail, or knife stuck in the ground for the antenna ground, completing the circuit. This may overload some SW radios, not mine, but will about double reception on AM.
FM? Your kidding me, right?

 

Cool idea! I will definitely be making me one of those to play with...Thanks!

 

Why kidding? most portable radios with FM capability will have greatly improved reception with additional wire attached to the pull out antenna. No separate ground needed, either.

 

You are correct, this will increase range and reception of FM. I didn't mean to bash FM, but it is basically line of sight transmission, and unless there is ducting or other undependable skip in play, range is limited as compared to AM. At night I can tune AM to pick up Toronto and Quebec Canada, New York, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Tulsa, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Caribbean stations, and Mexico City. When your out in the boonies AM is your friend for staying in touch with what's happening on the outside. A bit of wire added as an antenna will pull in many more.

 

Thanks for all the good feedback. Would they boost cb? we have cb in our vehicles and our suv is set up for HF, that is what I was thinking of building one for the hf. But have learned it might be good for other bands as well.

 

Any additional wire will help reception to one or another degree. Any additional wire is apt to fry your xceiver finals if you transmit on it, and let the magic smoke out. DON"T LET THE MAGIC SMOKE OUT!! Said another way, don't add wire to the antenna on your cb units or any transmitter without having a good handle on what you are doing. You don't. Yet..

 

We have an old Kenwood ts940s that we inherited, the MIL was a Ham. We have a 2 meter ic2200h which can be installed in the suv when needed, and a couple of cb's. We are not licensed yet, but are learning and listening. Obviously we can not transmit on the Kenwood or the 2 meter because we are not licensed yet? I asked about the antenna because I am learning.

 

I've seen those from time to time at hamfests, and maybe you can clear up something for me. Does the spooled wire act as an inductor and shorten the antenna length at higher frequencies?

William Warren

 

It is really unlikely that these antennas would end up solenoid wound but there are still reactances to deal with, inductive or capacitive, if you tried to use them for transmitting. You would be better served to build dedicated transmitting antennas. Don't want to run a smoke test. Japs had a wind up antenna they used during the war and SteppIR sells something that works on similar idea, but I think it is a mast mounted beam.

 

I am curious about this question too. The spooled wire left inside the reel must have unwanted effects on the function of the antenna.

His radio "go box" in the video has a maximum output of 10 watts, so he seems to contradict his own "wimpy QRP" argument.

The guy goes out of his way to diss the "wimpy QRP" FT-817 and says to use an 857 because it will do 100 watts and you can always turn the power down if you want to run QRP. The problem with that theory is 1) If you run QRP with an 857 you're lugging along a radio that's a lot bigger and heavier than it needs to be, and 2) if you run full 100 watt power then you'll need to also lug along some way to generate enough juice to push it. Either way, it's a flawed concept.

None of this has anything to do with the merits of the antenna, but I did watch the antenna video as well as the video on the go box. His conflicting statements and glossing over the numerous drawbacks of using an 857 for carry-portable at any power level really jumped out at me.

 

Neither the 817 nor the 857 have on board tuners but they do have on board SWR meters. That would make spooling the wire out to just the right spot all the more critical. There would be a lot of tweaking/trial & error every time you change frequency by more than a few KC.

Having an antenna analyzer would be mighty handy, although needing a $300-plus analyzer to use an inexpensive antenna kind of negates the "inexpensive" aspect of the project.

I'm still hoping someone can address what effect the unspooled wire has on antenna performance.