General > General Technical Chat
Any Shortwave Radio Tips for a Noob Considering the Hobby?
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fourfathom:
I believe that the antenna jack uses the tip for the antenna hot wire (center conductor of the coax if you use coax between the radio and the antenna) and the sleeve is for the antenna ground (or shield of the coax, if used).  The plug "ring" contact can be ignored.

I wouldn't bother with tuned / loop antennas just yet.  Just a length of wire connected to the jack tip (say 10 feet or more, string it up as best you can, or throw most of it out a window.  Even tacked up across the ceiling is worthwhile.  Connect the jack sleeve to another wire going in more or less the opposite direction, or if you gave an actual earth ground (say a copper water pipe) clamp the ground wire to that.  Or just ignore the sleeve connection.  Then see what you get.

Later you can try a better outside antenna, perhaps with a balun and coax to the radio.  But for now, start simple.  Don't let people bully you into thinking it has to be perfect -- it doesn't.
james_s:
In my somewhat limited experience with shortwave antennas, I've found that a long wire works as well as anything, and the longer the better. You'll get better reception if you ground the radio to a solid earth ground which you can do via the ground contact on the antenna jack, coax is not necessary unless you have the radio indoors in an electrically noisy environment and the antenna outside.

Don't expect to find a whole lot on the shortwave band in general, there is still some activity but about 95% of what was there 20-30 years ago is all gone now.
edy:
I found some telephone wire composed of 4 different wire strands (the type with single-core copper red, yellow, green, black) and pulled out about 20 feet of one of the strands. I connected it to the tip of a 3.5mm phone jack (I only had stereo jacks), and hung it out my upstairs window and tied it down in the backyard to a garden hose-holder (plastic). So it is vertically oriented and fairly "taught" because it is snugly wedged into my window and tied to something in the backyard. I can close the window no problem, the wire is thin enough to pass through. I also connected the "ground" part of the 3.5mm phone jack (the sleeve) to ground earth of a mains plug to see if it will make a difference. I seem to be picking up a few more stations but not a huge number. As before, AM/FM reception is excellent but I'm waiting to see what happens with LW/SW. Perhaps later at night there will be better reception.
james_s:
You'll probably need a wire 50-100' or longer for best results, and generally they're horizontal, I don't know off hand how much that matters.
rdl:
If you don't already have one, get a copy of the ARRL Handbook. It's full of info about radio and electronics in general. It doesn't need to be the latest edition, even one 20 years old is still useful. You should be able to find a copy for under $10.
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