Re: Whatever's this? Strange 'radio aerial'?
Woolworth's were selling those 'birdcage' aerials in the mid 50s along with coils of plastic coated and bare twisted copper flex. They sold them to people like me - a 13yr old novice with a low gullibility threshold who didn't know any better.
I bought one with money from my newspaper round and fixed it to the post at the end of our garden. Didn't take me long to discover that it was a bit of a con trick, because by sticking that at the end of a 30ft length of wire 15ft up in the air, with a 15ft down-lead meant that the wire was the aerial - not the 'birdcage' at the end of it! It didn't make a scrap of difference to the signal strength. Well it wouldn't, would it?
Other 'magic aerials' were available - a compact cardboard tube dangling on a length of wire which was plugged into the aerial socket. They worked after a fashion, but inside, were just a physically large capacitor with one end connected to the wire. Basically, it was just using on foil of the cap as an 'aerial'.
Like most houses in the street, we had a rented Redifusion [typo?] wired set (just a speaker in a large Bakelite box with a volume control and a switch on the wall to select a few preset stations and it was only my interest in short-waves using a little 1-valve homebrew radio (F.G. Rayer - 'Hobbies Weekly'), which caused me to put an aerial up.
Happy days!
__________________
David.
BVWS Member.
G-QRP Club member 1339.
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