Wireless Aerial

[Newgirl2013]

Good afternoon
I have recently purchased an old 1950 Grampian Tuner Amplifier
It has an AM Medium / Long wave tuner
I live in a very poor signal area
Please can someone tell me what sort of aerial I will need for the Grampian Tuner Amp
Thanks very much
Sharon

[Aub]

I would us a length of insulated wire connected to the aerial socket
The wire should, preferably, be outside if possible and be as long as is practical. There's lots of noise on long and medium wave these days and fewer stations to hear but it's still worth doing. That looks like a interesting bit of kit, what with it having tone controls.

Good luck

Aub

[Radio Tech]

Hi Sharon

I always reckon that about 100 feet of wire strung up with an insulator each end and then lead down into the back of the set.

Ken

[Station X]

You don't really need proper insulators for aerials intended for reception, especially if you're using insulated wire. I use plastic "string" at the ends of my long wire aerial.

[Newgirl2013]

Thanks everyone for your help

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
At my primary school in the very early 60s there was a Grampian tuner amp in the assembly hall very similar to yours. The one at my school had a lockable front cover and a 'magic eye' tuning indicator at top centre.
It had (I presume) a 100 volt line output to feed a socket in each classroom for a speaker that us kids had to tote from the hall to the classroom as needed to listen to schools broadcasts.
I always coveted it, but never saw another one since those far off halcyon days!
Thanks for the memories!
Cheers, Pete.

[Ed_Dinning]

Hi, you could try a frame aerial, something about 1/2 metre square. Have a google and you will see simple designs.
These should be really effective with a set like that, you can turn the aerial to minimise noise

Ed

[paulsherwin]

If you don't want to go to the trouble of putting up a long outdoor aerial, just try draping the longest length of wire you can find around the room. It won't give anything like as good a signal but may be adequate. You could experiment by connecting the end of it to your TV aerial outer screening, or even a central heating radiator.

As has been said though, there's not much left to listen to on MW and LW nowadays, and that's only going to get worse.

[Newgirl2013]

Hi Pete
These Grampians don't come up very often
The first one I saw was at my School in the 1950s
I always wanted one like it
The last one I saw was on Ebay about ten years ago
Sharon

[Julesomega]

In schools and factories these were used with an Antiference 'Skyrod' antenna
There's a discussion of these in the thread Trying to identify 'schools' radio

The beauty of this arrangement is that if you can site the antenna away from the noise in the building you can use standard co-ax cable to connect to the receiver. I modified a CB half-wave vertical for this

[Newgirl2013]

I have managed to find a suitable dipole aerial
Do I mount it horizontal or vertical

[Station X]

The fact it can be mounted vertically or horizontally suggests it's very small and possibly unsuitable. Tell us more and perhaps post a picture.

[Edward Huggins]

Originally Posted by Newgirl2013

I have managed to find a suitable dipole aerial
Do I mount it horizontal or vertical

That sounds like a FM aerial and, if so, is not likely to be suitable.

[Newgirl2013]

The man I bought it From used it on his Medium and Long wave AM radio

[Station X]

We need some pictures.

[Silicon]

Is the dipole aerial about 5 foot long?
That is the standard length of a VHF 'FM' aerial.

If there is a lot of RF interference near the Grampian radio, it will automatically desensitise itself (using the AGC circuit) and that will reduce the wanted radio signals as well.

Have you tried it in different locations?

Band Pass filters and tuned aerials can sometimes help.

[Newgirl2013]

I asked him if it would be suitable for my Grampian
He told me it worked on his AM Radio
Where I live we're not allowed to put a long wire aerial outside
Here's a pic of the aerial I bought

[Radio Wrangler]

In all likelihood the that aerial did absolutely nothing for his AM radio. It would have been using signals picked up on the feed cable!

The antenna on that cable is designed for signals around 100MHz. AM broadcast signals are around 1MHz. To be an efficient antenna on 1 MHz, the antenna element would need to be close to 100 times longer.

It'll do something, but it'll be a long way short of optimum.

Start with just a long length of simple cheap wire out a window and out to the bottom of your garden. Any old wire will do. You don't need fancy insulators but you do need a bit of plastic to insulate it from other things.

Resonated loops can help avoid interference, but they're more complicated. If the long wire produces things you want more of and better signal to noise ratio, then they are where you could look next.

But we are at a turning point with broadcasters turning off their AM transmitters at an accelerating rate. This is leaving frequencies clear for hearing more distant and therefore exotic stations, if the interference from switch mode power supplies lets you hear them.

David

[Katar83]

I've been through the same research for my Murphy A40C radio few months back, which normally requires long wire aerial. Effectively was recommended active loop antenna, which was about £250, wire around my garden wouldn't really be practical but provided some great results as I could tune all the way to Polish radio 1 on LW then eventually (kinda just to see how it would work) just tried my TV aerial, both wires connected together and was proper surprised to find that it worked great, I get lots and lots of stations here and it works really well on it. It's most likely down to length of wire in the wall but if you have TV sockets in your house that's definitely something to try.

[Station X]

Originally Posted by Newgirl2013

Where I live we're not allowed to put a long wire aerial outside

In your position I'd just put up a thin black long wire aerial and see whether anybody objects. The worse that could happen is that whoever imposed the restriction asks you to take it down.