Subj : Slinky
To   : John Guillory
From : Angus Mcleod
Date : Thu Jul 08 2004 07:28 pm

  Re: Slinky
  By: John Guillory to KC8SZU on Fri Jun 11 2004 04:18:00

 > Don't know about it, but when I was a security Guard at one of the plants,
 > another guard had a Short-Wave Radio that he'd listen to at work... He had
 > this antenae that was basically like 50 feet of wire that he strung out all
 > over the building.... He claimed it wasn't the altitude that got the
 > reception on Short-Wave, but the distance.... More Antanea in any direction
 > meant better reception to him....

He was effectively using a "random wire" antenna -- sometimes wrongly called a
"long wire" antenna.  The antenna works because it effectively incerases the
aperture (sp>) of the antenna.  The more copper you have up there the more
incoming radio waves will strike it and the more signal will be presented to
the input to the receiver.  It works, but generally poorly in comparison to a
better antenna design.  A simple dipole antenna _on_frequency_ would probably
work MUCH better, and take far less wire too.  But you lose the simplicity of
construction and installation of a random wire. and a dipole is essentially a
narrow-band design whereas a random wire is equally "random" on whatever band
you use.

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