Can I make an FM antenna from speaker wire?

Or, attach the center conductor of your cable TV coax to one of the connections on the receiver.

i need to make a new one for my shortwave radio. lost the old 100 foot flying vee in a windstorm. we climbed up 50 feet to put that sucker up and now the tree in the middle of the vee has crashed. anyone know an easy way to rig for 5 to 140 megahertz? my sightline one for police band is okay. i forget the megahertz, i am a real rookie when it comes to SW but i unfortunatly spent a fair whack of money and have quite the unit.

You guys are great to answer right away, thanks.

Can I just strip the end of the speaker wire and stick one of the wires in each of the two FM connector points, and then hang the long speaker wire up over the curtain rod?

Just follow the instructions:

[link to www.wryr.org]

You guys are great to answer right away, thanks.

Can I just strip the end of the speaker wire and stick one of the wires in each of the two FM connector points, and then hang the long speaker wire up over the curtain rod?

You have to split the free end so you have "rabbit ears" in effect. You may have to rotate the rabbit ears to maximize the signal you want. If the station is close or very strong then then what you propose is sufficient.

i need to make a new one for my shortwave radio. lost the old 100 foot flying vee in a windstorm. we climbed up 50 feet to put that sucker up and now the tree in the middle of the vee has crashed. anyone know an easy way to rig for 5 to 140 megahertz? my sightline one for police band is okay. i forget the megahertz, i am a real rookie when it comes to SW but i unfortunatly spent a fair whack of money and have quite the unit.

Shortwave sounds fun. You must have gotten great reception with the old antenna, sorry it got wrecked.

I have ever wanted to try a scanner for when I ride the train, to overhear the crew and know what's going on. A lot of people do that, I think I would like that.

You guys are great to answer right away, thanks.

Can I just strip the end of the speaker wire and stick one of the wires in each of the two FM connector points, and then hang the long speaker wire up over the curtain rod?

You guys are great to answer right away, thanks.

Can I just strip the end of the speaker wire and stick one of the wires in each of the two FM connector points, and then hang the long speaker wire up over the curtain rod?

No, you have to seperate the two halves to make a dipole. If you leave the two wires together, it just acts like a transmission line, and won't absorb RF energy.

It should look like this:


-----| |-----
| |
| |
+ +

You guys are great to answer right away, thanks.

Can I just strip the end of the speaker wire and stick one of the wires in each of the two FM connector points, and then hang the long speaker wire up over the curtain rod?

No, you have to seperate the two halves to make a dipole. If you leave the two wires together, it just acts like a transmission line, and won't absorb RF energy.

It should look like this:


-----| |-----
.....| |
.....| |
.....+ +

Sorry, the formatter screws it up. Move the | | over a few on the bottom to see it right.

I did something similar to this. I am living in a basement apartment with a drop tile ceiling and i ran some speaker wire from the 30Ohm antennae terminals on my stereo receiver, up the wall and into the ceiling space. I taped one end of it to the air duct and one to the cross member holding up the tiles and now i get every local radio station crystal clear where i used to get none.