Rca hf-4
 

I redid my den for a new flat screen this week. The Sony 34XBR960 gave up. I used my restored RCA HF-4 as the stand for a Target 4k set. I ran the Target headphone to the HF-4 Victrola input for sound from the set. A bizarre location on the top of the chassis next to the eye tube. The rest is fed from the rack on the right to the set for HDMI and 4x analog players and the optical audio to a Panasonic surround. All audio can come through the HF-4. On Golden Pond is on the screen from a Realistic CED-1 player. AM is on a long wire. My HF-4 is missing the doors. Any donors?

Why are you using a wire antenna for AM? I didn't think anyone used such antennas anymore, except of course for amateur radio. (Living in an apartment building, I couldn't erect any kind of outdoor radio or TV antenna even if I wanted to.) With all the 50,000-watt AM stations in this country, I didn't think such an antenna was necessary for reception on this band unless one was in a very, very poor signal area. I don't know exactly where you are in Pennsylvania (I am guessing Pittsburgh), but wherever you are, again, you must be getting at least several 50kW AM stations. I gave up listening to AM radio years ago, when most stations went to talk/sports and all but gave up on music programming.

Some radios especially pre-WWII consoles, like that appears to be, didn't have AM loops and were meant to have a long wire.

Even in an apartment you can have an indoor long wire by discretely stringing a thin wire along the baseboard of the longest wall you have. Most sets will work decent with 15-50' of wire, but work their best with around 100-200'

Jeff, no loop antenna on this set. 50kw stations are sometimes directional as in 1210am here in Philadelphia. They go NE and SE to hug the east coast at night where the population is. I am west of Philly, in a valley and 1210 sounds like a 1kw station. The radio is built for either a two wire factory dipole kit you could buy or a long wire. Not sure what Zenith did in 1938. Let us know.

As I worked for the Phillies for years, the broadcast rights would come up occasionally and the owners liked the 1210am signal as it would get all the way at night to their summer homes in Cape Cod and surroundings. Internet radio has fixed that issue and we are now local FM. Still bad where I live.

Zenith and many other makes specified either a long wire or a doublet type antenna. There was a terminal marked A,D and ground. When using a long wire the D terminal was jumpered to the ground terminal.