[R-390] Small Voodoo Antenna

[Bob Camp]

Hi

A very interesting story. I never had much luck with crystal sets past 
the local stations. Of course I did not have your devotion to putting 
up a real antenna for one either.

My first radio was a five tube Philco with a slide rule dial. It came 
as a hand me down from a distant uncle.  If I remember correctly there 
were two short wave bands on it and everything up to maybe 12 MHz was 
crowded into two passes on a six inch slide rule dial. Most of the 
short wave bands were about the width of the dial pointer.

The radio got used for an occasional listen on the local AM stations 
until one day I tried the band switch. The radio was reputed to not 
work on short wave so I had not tried it up there. Not much happened 
and I more or less gave up. A couple of days later in moving things 
around I noticed the antenna connector screws on the back of the radio. 
As an experiment I hooked up a short chunk of wire and tried the short 
wave band again. Amazingly enough Radio Netherlands was coming in just 
fine ... I was hooked ....

  Eventually the antenna evolved into about eight turns of wire around 
the ceiling of the bedroom. Nothing longer than ten feet was made up of 
wire from the same source.  I kept adding more wire and rubber bands 
and stuff as I found them. It was amazing just how easy it was to 
convince my self that every modification made things work better.

Never had as much fun with any radio setup as I did with that one.

	Take Care

		Bob Camp
		KB8TQ

On Jul 10, 2004, at 8:20 PM, Harry Joel wrote:

> a bit of history about antennas, if you care.
>
> As a youngster (1943) I was fascinated about anything radio related. 
> Living in a boardinghouse for out-of-town highschool boys, some of us 
> got into a contest (I could call it now a DX kind) to see who could 
> pull in the most distant AM station using a crystal set. Chrystal sets 
> were the only type of receiver we could indulge in (private listening, 
> small, no AC power, etc). We had them on the small bedside table.  
> Antennas!!! where to put them? Most just had a short hank of wire 
> laying under the bed. There were two tall and unused flag poles about 
> 50 yards in front of the building. My bed was next to the second floor 
> window and reading about long-wire antennas I decided to "hoist" my 
> antenna up there. On a week-end, with all the other boys gone home, I 
> put a small wire loop around one pole, affixed a porcelain egg and 
> attached one end of the antenna wire. Then attached a string to the 
> loop and hoisted it up to the top (30 plus feet). Doing the same on 
> the other flag pole, but just fed the wire through the eye of the 
> insulator so it could move. Went up to the fourth floor attic and 
> threw a long string to the ground to hoist the loose end of the 
> antenna up. Down to attach the wire to the string then up again to the 
> attic. Attached another insulator next to the roof line, then 
> tightened up good on the antenna wire. Down at ground level I yanked 
> hard on the halyard of pole number one to break the string. Now I had 
> my long wire. Fed the down leg through the window. Presto. I won the 
> DX contest by routinely receiving a strong signal from BBC London at 
> my location in upper Bavaria. This was only possible when ALL AM 
> stations shut down during air raid warnings. The other contestants 
> wanted to know how I got the antenna up there. I led them to believe 
> that I shimmied up on both poles. They were suitably impressed. PS: 
> Listening to BBC was considered a criminal act by the Nazi powers, 
> which made my private listening even more enjoyable. I can still here 
> the station break audio of a deep kettle drum spelling out the V for 
> victory morse code. They had a regular program on BBC named English by 
> Radio which I enjoyed a lot.
> I have other early radio memories, but this is my 
> favorite______________________________________________________________
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