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Old May 10th 07, 08:19 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna
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First recorded activity by RadioBanter: May 2007
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Default How to make an antenna for receiving (only) broadcast AM

Living in Portugal in the 1950`s, I used a Beverage antenna to listen to
the CBS Evening News from WCBS in New York, and WWL in New Orleans.
Whenever one station faded, I just rocked the dial and the other station
would be there. Portugal is on Greenwich time so the Evening News was
around midnight local time. By then, most of the Europeans had signed
off.

All you must have for a Beverage antenna is a long wire, say 2
wavelengths long, aimed at the targeted broadcaster.


For 690 KHz that would be 2,850 feet of wire, just over 1/2 a mile of
wire.


WHen he said "all you need" I was tempted to add "and space for that
antenna".

Of course, some people are lucky. You do hear of people doing really well
with really long wire antennas, and presumably they have such great
success
because few have the space to have similar antennas.


In TN I had 25 acres and ran a 200+ ft long wire which was enough to pick up
the Nashville stations. I once connected my antenna to the electric fence
wire (after disconnecting the charger) that ran around about 1/2 of the
place. Didn't do much.

Here I have 16 acres which means I could, in theory, run about 2,000 ft of
wire. Still I was thinking of something a little smaller.