Your foil antenna sounds a great deal like Marconi's first antenna used on the family estate to prove radio waves were not just "line-of-sight".
https://readtiger.com/img/wkp/en/Marconi%27s_first_radio_transmitter.jpg 73, Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nicklas Johnson Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2017 10:09 AM To: Dauer, Edward Cc: Elecraft Reflector Reflector Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Suggestions for Introducing a 10-year-old to Amateur Radio and Electronics I second this. My first foray into electronics in general and radio in particular came from the old Radio Shack / Science Fair "160 in one" and "200 in one" project kits. Prepare for a spaghetti-wire mess of jumpers between spring terminals, but it was a really great means for me to begin to understand, and it was a great way for someone of that age (I think I started toying with them around the age of 9) to experiment. My favorite kit build, of course, was the AM Radio transmitter, which led to a lot of experimentation with different antennas to see how far around our neighborhood I could pick up my signal, trying to find "improvements" to the circuit, means of using speaker and line-level inputs instead of the microphone input so I could play music more easily, etc. etc. It turned out that, for reasons I didn't understand at the time, a 6-foot-long sheet of aluminum foil makes a pretty good broadcast band antenna for a toy kit, much better than just a wire :-) Eventually this led to a postal mail conversation with my uncle, who is a Ham, who in turn sent me a copy of "Tune in the World with Ham Radio" to help answer some questions I had about antennas. And then, upon doing the calculations, I was dismayed to learn that a proper vertical antenna for the frequency I was trying to use would need to be over 150 feet high, well beyond the allowed length for a Part 15 transmitter. Someone should have told me about loading coils... I bet I could have gotten a little more range out of that aluminum foil! Nick ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
