[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

A length of wire 20 or so feet long will work well for an antenna. As for the ground, connecting to a radiator or water pipe would work, but grounds are not that important. The radio, being connected to the powerline, and the powerline's neutral being grounded, is usually enough.

Many vintage and antique radios, notably the big Zenith, et al. consoles and the better table sets, were built for DX (distance reception) because, in radio's early days, not every city or town had a local radio station. The better ones often do not need an outside antenna (just a short length of wire connected to the antenna terminal will work in many cases), though using one always helps. I have a Zenith Trans-Oceanic Royal 1000-1 (the first solid-state version of the T/O line) that works very well on shortwave with only its five-foot whip antenna (I'll say: at night I often hear Hawaii's WWVH behind WWV on this set, and just with the whip). Same thing (almost) with standard broadcast. I live near Lake Erie and can hear many stations from Canada (SW Ontario, but mostly Toronto area) on this radio just using its built-in Wavemagnet. Last night I had the set on and heard WWKB (KB-1520 oldies radio) Buffalo, New York for the first time. This radio's front end is as hot as a firecracker. I can hear stations on AM even during daylight that my other sets, except perhaps the receiver section of my Icom IC-725 HF ham rig, won't touch. At night, the sky is the limit. I get stations up and down the East Coast and Eastern Seaboard all night long; if some of the local stations in Cleveland would leave the air for maintenance once in a while, I bet I'd hear many stations out west as well. In fact, I did hear KOA-850am in Denver one Sunday night (Monday morning, as it was after midnight) about 20 years ago after a local station on that frequency signed off for technical maintenance. Haven't heard that station or any others (except the locals) on 850, 1100, 1220, etc. since then, as the locals all stay on all the time these days, and there are no such things as purely clear channels anymore since the FCC changed the regulations to allow small daytime or limited-time stations to operate full time on these former clear channels, at reduced nighttime power of course.

On the issue of grounding, there is one situation where the use of an external ground on an antenna system is mandatory--using the power line ground is not enough. That is when you are using an antenna for transmitting. Dipoles, in particular, work against ground and will not load properly (or at all) unless the system employs a counterpoise; vertical all-band antennas are quite fussy in this regard as well, requiring individual radials for each band the antenna covers. The other reason a ground/counterpoise is required for any transmitting antenna is to prevent RF feedback problems and shock hazards. Failure to use a ground system (radials or counterpoise) will often result in RF on your transmitter/transceiver's chassis or cabinet, or even your microphone or key. RF feedback can and often does damage or destroy transmitter finals (much more common with solid state finals than with tubes) and even the attenuation resistors at the headphone jack in your receiver. I have had to have the headphone circuits in two of my ham rigs repaired because feedback from a mistuned random-wire antenna allowed high levels of RF signal to enter the audio stages, literally cooking these resistors to the point where I am sure they burned open; the headphone jack was unusable after the feedback occurred. One warning sign of excessive RF in your station (caused by improper or inadequate grounding) is a buzzing or frying sound in your headphones when keying the transmitter on CW, or hearing your own voice in your phones or even the rig's own speaker when operating AM or SSB. If your rig does not have a built-in monitor for this purpose, you are getting RF feedback from your antenna into the transceiver when this occurs. Check your antenna's ground system and correct any problems before continuing; otherwise your transmitter, receiver or both could suffer serious damage. Get off the air at once and start looking for trouble if you find your high-power linear amplifier doing this. RF feedback causes enough problems for hams running low to medium power, but such feedback in a kilowatt linear amplifier can heavily damage or even destroy the entire system (or even, heaven forbid, start a fire if components in the transmitter, amplifier or antenna system itself overheat ) if left unchecked.