Vintage Radio Gound Connections

[Fisherdude]

It's been my (somewhat limited) experience that connecting a true earth ground does make a small difference. First, these older radios were designed with the assumption that it would be connected to a ground, so there is also a safety factor involved.

It seems that the noise level drops a bit. The radio seems a little less "staticy" with the ground connected. I'm assuming the ground drains off some of the power line interference, etc.

Then again, maybe it's the coffee! Sandy G, chime in with your thoughts!

[Chad Hauris]

When we were working with the arborphone 1927 radio we could barely get anything at all without the ground, even with an antenna wire connected...connecting the "ground" terminal to the water pipe enabled us to get all the local stations clearly. Have not found the ground connection to be nearly so important on any other type of set.

[Telecolor 3007]

It's making a differnce. I've tryed and with the ground antena connected the sound have less parazites.

[Morden2004]

Digging way back into my EE courses and with experience as a kid with 20's and 30's sets, I believe that most of them were designed such that the AM antenna circuit was not complete (as a tuned circuit) until a ground was connected. That is not to say that you wouldn't receive some RF without a ground.

In those days A/C service was ungrounded, giving rise to the need to add a earth ground to the chassis (circuit). AM transmissions were usually done with a horizontal transmission line(s) and those transmission lines used earth ground as part of the transmitter's tuned circuit.

[Trivia Alert] BTW, it was soon discovered that stations along the seaboard put out more radiated power than, say, those in the desert - guess why?

I think this is true for most pre-war receivers.

Paul