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SLINKY ANTENNAS

A

alg2468

I've seen auctions on Ebay for Slinky Antennas? Supposedly they work well for shortwave and Am reception. Has anyone here bought one and how well do they work? And how are these antennas connected to radios not having external antenna connections? How do they compare on AM to tunable loop antennas from Terk, Select a tenna and the Kaito and Degen AM antennas?
 
They'll work fine for SW but the ferrite rod in your receiver is will probably do a better job on MW.

An easy way to couple an antenna to a receiver that doesn't have an antenna jack is connecting and alligator clip to the wire antenna and attaching to the whip on the receiver. However you can get static discharges from a longwire antenna,which will blow out the front end of your receiver,occasionally from this method.

I like using a trusty old toilet paper tube. Wrap 20 turns or so of wire around it and attach the 'gator clip to one end of the tp tube coil. The clip gets attached to the longwire antenna. You then slip the tube over the whip antenna of the radio and let the inductance from the coil and the whip/ferrite rod provide the "connection" for the antenna. This works well and cuts down on overloading and images in cheaper SW portables.

BTW,MW loops are dead easy to build and work very well. Do a google search on 'em and you'll find a ton simple plans for them. I've built several of them.

99% of the SW antennas on the market aren't worth the money. A simple homemade longwire outdoors will outperform them and come in at well under 5 bucks.
 
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