Twiddler wrote:
I know very little about ham radio and have a simple question about
antennas. I have been given some radios that were connected to large
roof-mount antennas. I don't seem to be able to pick up anything on
them using the standard rubber ducky antennas that came with the
radios. I occured to me that the previous owner may have tuned the
radios to use the big antennas and maybe that is why the don't work
with the small antennas. Is that a likely explaination? Thanks in
advance, Twiddler

I don't think so. Perhaps the front ends of the radios have been damaged
by static discharge while connected to the large antennas.

What frequencies are you listening to, HF or VHF/UHF? Some VHF/UHF
handheld radios come with a rubber ducky and have HF coverage as a
secondary feature. On those, you generally can't hear much on HF with
the ducky except maybe strong signals at night.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL