Need helpt with making or buying a SW antenna to clip on to whip for Grundig g8

[Mid West Clubber]

What do you guys think,?, would the Sangeon or the Kaito 23 foot longwire with a (clip on) improve my SW reception.. My reception is actually quite good as it is, but I listen to alot of Pirates from both U.S and Europe and often have a hard time pulling them outta the static.. I made a 30 foot coax wire that I jerry rigged and tied to a tree and wrapped the copper wire round and round the antenna and this helped about 20 to 30 percent, but it just isnt practical.. Any tips on improving SSB SW reception with either a clip on antenna, or something I could make and rig up.. Any help or reviews are appreciated. I found a powered loop antenna on Universal Radio.com for 36 dollars, but I cant really spend that much. Can anyone suggest what I can do.. I dont have a jack for an external antenna, so all I can do is use a clip on... thnks so much fellow DXers. I mainly listen to pirate, cladestine and spy numbers stations, but also like to listen to radio cairo and radio austraila,, which I can sometimes get but only at just the right time of night. I cant pick up much of anything during the day except WWV and bible blasters. Is my radio just not good enough, or would an antenna help alot,.,, the fm reception on this puppy is suberb. Good DX portable. Also where is the best and cheapest place to find a good clip on antenna?

 

[stormy01]

Re: Need help with making or buying a SW antenna to clip on to whip for Grundig g8

Just experiment. I have the Sony AN-71 "rollup/travel" antenna that came with my ICF-SW7600GR. It's about 10 feet long and it does a fairly good job of improving the signal strength over using just the telescoping antenna. However, to hear weaker stations [especially below 10 MHz] you may need to consider something longer than a 10' antenna. Generally, the longer the antenna the more signal voltage produced by that antenna. The downside may be that a longer antenna will produce so much signal voltage that it overloads the radio and you get distortion and images of stations all over the dial, so the antenna may need to be shortened and/or an attenuator may be need to be added to reduce the effects of overloading the radio's tuner. You may get good results with 30 feet or more of #20-24 stranded wire (stranded wire is easier to work with and less susceptible to breaking from a kink than a solid conductor)

Just make your own clip-on antenna: attach the wire to a small alligator clip with a screw terminal on it - so you don't have to solder the connection, unless you don't mind soldering, then get the cheaper alligator clip that has to be soldered. Attach the alligator clip to your telescoping antenna, string the wire near, or preferably out the window - especially if your house has aluminum siding - and you should be in business. Perhaps there is some kind of project online to build an antenna tuner, cheaper than a ready-made antenna tuner, to maximize the efficiency of the relatively short length of wire. This web page looks like there are some good ideas on it: http://www.hamuniverse.com/shortwaveantenna.html or try something like "external antenna for SW portables" in your search engine of choice. Some of the points I'm making I'm sure that you already know, those points are more for other readers wanting to learn from the discussion.

As you may know, those pirates usually only radiate a couple hundred watts of RF power at most, so they would be weak compared to the professional broadcasters. Without a communications grade receiver it's gonna be tough to hear the pirates with their very low power. Let us know the results of your experiments! Good Luck!

 

[Mid West Clubber]

Will standard speaker wire work,, I got tons of that.. The coax wire helps alot, but Its alot of work, and the copper insulator likes to snap. Thnks.

 

[stormy01]

Will standard speaker wire work,, I got tons of that.. The coax wire helps a lot, but Its a lot of work, and the copper insulator likes to snap. Thnks.

So the speaker wire is 18 or 16 gauge I would guess? That would be fine. Just twist the two wires together on both ends, in doing so it lowers the resistance a bit versus using only one of the two wires. Lower resistance will help the efficiency of the antenna somewhat. Coax is shielded, so that may attenuate the signal if you are/were using the center [solid] wire. Coax would be fine if you have a lot of electrical interference indoors near your radio, then the center wire would be clipped to the telescoping antenna and the shielded [braided or foil] part would need to be earth grounded outdoors to a ground rod or a metal stick driven into the ground at least several inches. The speaker wire could then be connected to the coaxial cable's center conductor outdoors and strung on a fence or between trees. Be aware of any nearby power lines and avoid raising the antenna near same. You wouldn't want to be close to the power line anyway, your antenna may pick up electrical interference from the power line from your home or a nearby residence. I wouldn't recommend chassis grounding unless you know what you are doing, or it is provided as a connection on the outside of the radio. Grounding on one end is better than not at all, though you need not take the coaxial/wire antenna route if electrical interference in your area is low. However, if electrical interference is somewhat of a problem, that will make the weaker signals harder to hear through the electrical interference on SW or on MW-AM.

 

[Mid West Clubber]

thnks stormy,.....