Hi there,
This topic, I'm sure has been covered before. My brother-in-law is about to
take a long sailing trip from NZ to USA as a passenger aboard a cargo ship.
He will be taking with him a Grundig YB 400 receiver. He had heard of other
sailors/passengers dangling an antenna out of their port hole window to tune
into radio stations on their SW receivers. He has asked me if I could make
something up for him to take away with him. The unit has a 3.5mm mono jack
as the ext. ant connector. The radio has a small reel of cable for the
external antenna. According to the user manual with the radio it indicates
coaxial cable as part of the antenna system with out mentioning cable
lengths. The tuning freq possible with this radio are FM 87.5 - 108 MHz, MW
520 - 1710 kHz, LW 144 - 353 kHz, SW 1711 - 30000 kHz & 3200 - 29700 kHz in
20 bands.
Any ideas for a portable antenna would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Angelo Sartore

Melbourne
AUSTRALIA

ADOPT, ADAPT, INVENT, DESTROY !

The SLINKY has been a popular field day antenna for years. I use it here
suspended vertically penetrated by a vertically mounted telescoping
fiberglass fishing pole. Cost $1.88 + $8.00 plus $ $2.00 for RG-1744U
and a hand wired 4:1 balun

This comercial $40.00 slinky CLIFFDWELLER will load up and work with a
tranmitter: http://usa2way.homestead.com/CliffDweller.html

I made mine with a Wal Mart SLinky

It started with a slinky stretched accross the LR and DR I picked up
Eastern Med but a LOTTA NOISE from the house.

SLINKYS, originally used by military exsperimentally in Korea, are a
popular antenna for HAM field days :

http://usa2way.homestead.com/CliffDweller.html

He wants $40.00 Slinkys cost $1.88 at WALMART

I USED one...NOT A BALANCED PAIr like the cliffdweller. His picture
shows it used INSIDE his shack. He's got a balun in the PVC Tee
connecting the two slinkys and a SO 259 for your coax

HADDA get the antenna outside and isolate it with a balun and come in
with sheilded cable instead of the nekked hookup wire tot he raidio
when it was inside.

Instead of expensive coax you can use TV cable RG-58 and use the TV 300
ohm to 75 ohm adapter as a poor mans balun...many listeners dont notice
any difference between that and a home made 50 ohm balun.


All you ever wanted to know about slinky antennas---many URLs derivative
from within

http://www.geocities.com/swl_yb400pe/slinkypage.html


I made my balun on a 1.25" powdered iron core You could use the core
from a scrapped switching power supply from a computer. Wind a secondary
1/4th the no. of turns you estimate is on the primary

mine was 100 turns of magnet wire primary for antenna and ground.
The secondary 40 turns magnet wire
on top of that for RG-174 and braid to receiver

received briefly or weakly Ceylon and Singapore on it and routinely
Europe,Eastern Med and S. America

yodar in orlando


Angelo Sartore wrote:
Hi there,
This topic, I'm sure has been covered before. My brother-in-law is about to
take a long sailing trip from NZ to USA as a passenger aboard a cargo ship.
He will be taking with him a Grundig YB 400 receiver. He had heard of other
sailors/passengers dangling an antenna out of their port hole window to tune
into radio stations on their SW receivers. He has asked me if I could make
something up for him to take away with him. The unit has a 3.5mm mono jack
as the ext. ant connector. The radio has a small reel of cable for the
external antenna. According to the user manual with the radio it indicates
coaxial cable as part of the antenna system with out mentioning cable
lengths. The tuning freq possible with this radio are FM 87.5 - 108 MHz, MW
520 - 1710 kHz, LW 144 - 353 kHz, SW 1711 - 30000 kHz & 3200 - 29700 kHz in
20 bands.
Any ideas for a portable antenna would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Angelo Sartore

Melbourne
AUSTRALIA

ADOPT, ADAPT, INVENT, DESTROY !

The part about the coaxial cable is optional. The advantage of using it is
reducing electrical noise, but I doubt that will be that much of a problem
at sea. Attaching a small weight to a length of wire as long as practical
and dangling the wire out a porthole and connecting one end to the receiver
ought to be sufficient. I'd be very interested to hear his experience with
short wave reception from far out to sea s. Radio Australia 5.990 6.020
and Radio New Zealand 9.870 ought to be good signals as well as NBC Papua
New Guinea from Port Moresby 4.890. Also, the BBC has an early morning relay
on 5.020 . Radio Japan should have a good signal (can't remember a frequency
off hand). The pacific islands and indonesia might be easilly heard . I
don't know whether south america might not be audible, such as Radio
Nacional Do Amazonia Brasilia, Brazil 11.780, Radion Nacional de Argentina,
Buenos Aires might do well on 11.710 .
Please let us know


"Strength and Honor" BrioVita Solidarity
"Angelo Sartore" wrote in message
...
Hi there,
This topic, I'm sure has been covered before. My brother-in-law is about
to
take a long sailing trip from NZ to USA as a passenger aboard a cargo
ship.
He will be taking with him a Grundig YB 400 receiver. He had heard of
other
sailors/passengers dangling an antenna out of their port hole window to
tune
into radio stations on their SW receivers. He has asked me if I could make
something up for him to take away with him. The unit has a 3.5mm mono jack
as the ext. ant connector. The radio has a small reel of cable for the
external antenna. According to the user manual with the radio it indicates
coaxial cable as part of the antenna system with out mentioning cable
lengths. The tuning freq possible with this radio are FM 87.5 - 108 MHz,
MW
520 - 1710 kHz, LW 144 - 353 kHz, SW 1711 - 30000 kHz & 3200 - 29700 kHz
in
20 bands.
Any ideas for a portable antenna would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Angelo Sartore

Melbourne
AUSTRALIA

ADOPT, ADAPT, INVENT, DESTROY !

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 06:45:03 +1100, "Angelo Sartore"
wrote:

Hi there,
This topic, I'm sure has been covered before. My brother-in-law is about to
take a long sailing trip from NZ to USA as a passenger aboard a cargo ship.
He will be taking with him a Grundig YB 400 receiver. He had heard of other
sailors/passengers dangling an antenna out of their port hole window to tune
into radio stations on their SW receivers. He has asked me if I could make
something up for him to take away with him. The unit has a 3.5mm mono jack
as the ext. ant connector. The radio has a small reel of cable for the
external antenna. According to the user manual with the radio it indicates
coaxial cable as part of the antenna system with out mentioning cable
lengths. The tuning freq possible with this radio are FM 87.5 - 108 MHz, MW
520 - 1710 kHz, LW 144 - 353 kHz, SW 1711 - 30000 kHz & 3200 - 29700 kHz in
20 bands.
Any ideas for a portable antenna would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Angelo Sartore

Melbourne
AUSTRALIA

ADOPT, ADAPT, INVENT, DESTROY !

It does not need to be fancy. Fifty feet of wire with an alligator
clip or a plug on one end to attach to the whip or the antenna jack
would work fine. The wire does not need to be very heavy. I have had
better luck using single strand wire.

Angelo Sartore wrote:

Hi there,
This topic, I'm sure has been covered before. My brother-in-law is about to
take a long sailing trip from NZ to USA as a passenger aboard a cargo ship.
He will be taking with him a Grundig YB 400 receiver. He had heard of other
sailors/passengers dangling an antenna out of their port hole window to tune
into radio stations on their SW receivers. He has asked me if I could make
something up for him to take away with him. The unit has a 3.5mm mono jack
as the ext. ant connector. The radio has a small reel of cable for the
external antenna. According to the user manual with the radio it indicates
coaxial cable as part of the antenna system with out mentioning cable
lengths. The tuning freq possible with this radio are FM 87.5 - 108 MHz, MW
520 - 1710 kHz, LW 144 - 353 kHz, SW 1711 - 30000 kHz & 3200 - 29700 kHz in
20 bands.
Any ideas for a portable antenna would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Angelo Sartore

I would be tempted to fly a small helium balloon from the port hole or
deck with at least 20-ft of fine wire. Connect the wire to the whip and
I bet you would get some neat reception. Might be a good idea to ask
permission first. :-)


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With the amount of wind that will be present, the balloon would be trailing,
not rising. You would have a horizontal antenna with the altitude equal to
about the mooring point. I know people that have done this with kites
though. It works well but can be quite dangerous if you don't know what you
are doing.

I would be tempted to fly a small helium balloon from the port hole or
deck with at least 20-ft of fine wire. Connect the wire to the whip and
I bet you would get some neat reception. Might be a good idea to ask
permission first. :-)


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"starman" wrote in message
...

I would be tempted to fly a small helium balloon from the port hole or
deck with at least 20-ft of fine wire. Connect the wire to the whip and
I bet you would get some neat reception. Might be a good idea to ask
permission first. :-)

Would be kind of unwieldy to use on a ship, unless you had helium tanks
handy. Then you have to take into consideration the static charges on the
wire.

The wife & I went on a cruise a couple weeks ago and I was amazed at how
windy it gets on the upper deck of a ship. At times it was hard to walk
because of the wind. If you had a wire suspended by baloon I'm sure the
static charges would be horrendous.

I took my Sony 2010 and just used the portable whip and had decent results.
Our cabin was on the inside of the ship and didn't have any porthole, so the
only SWL'ing I did was up on deck. Didn't bother taking along any wire
since I didn't think I'd get permission to string one up, nor was there an
easy way to string one up without having it be in the way of people walking
on deck.

--
Tom Sevart N2UHC
Frontenac, KS
http://www.geocities.com/n2uhc

When I FCC-tested the receivers on shipboard lifeboat radios, back in my
working days, I'd string out a wire from a 90-foot spool of #22 stranded, with
yellow insulation for good visibility, that I had bought from Radio Shack. I
had cut off a foot or two for tying off the spool, with the remaining wire, out
of the way at a higher deck hand rail, cable, or pipe.

I still have that spool of wire in my tool bag. I had also used bits of it for
emergency splicing of burned open circuits. LOL

On a cargo vessel, your B-i-L will have more latitude. He should get familiar
with the radio officer. G

73,
Bill, K5BY