Have you ever made an AM antenna?

I want to make one but have no idea where to start.
I've looked at web pages, but just when I see something interesting they start putting those silly electronic symbols
in and talking about things I don't know yet.
Like what in the heck is a picofarads



Has anyone made one? Can you help me make one?

I mean how hard can it be? The little thing that comes with your stereo is too weak.

I'm too far out of the city to pick up an AM signal. (I need to make another FM antenna too)

[ablang]

I remember my Communications professor made his own AM radio using some electronics parts. It was very simple in design. I wished I remember some more about it.

A farad is some unit of measurement. I forget what it stands for, or what it represents, but a pico is, I think a 10 to the minus 9 power of something.

Well, thanks for the info ablang!

We seem to have about the same level of working knowledge

[RADAR1797]

Well this what farads are:

The unit of capacitance is a farad. A 1-farad capacitor can store one coulomb (coo-lomb) of charge at 1 volt. A coulomb is 6.25e18 (6.25 * 10^18, or 6.25 billion billion) electrons. One amp represents a rate of electron flow of 1 coulomb of electrons per second, so a 1-farad capacitor can hold 1 amp-second of electrons at 1 volt.

-RADAR

[Theophylact]

The farad is the unit of capacitance. A picofarad (pF) is ten-to-the-minus-twelfth farads.

The farad is an extremely large unit of capacitance. In practice, capacitors with values this large are almost never seen.

(Named after Michael Faraday.)

[wju425]

I think Radio Shack has an FM antenna (maybe AM too) that you put on top of house (like a tv antenna). They may have a model that has an amplifier built in to pull in weak signals.

\o/ Billy

[Theophylact]

I use the Terk Pi, myself.

[RADAR1797]

Theo,

Do you pick 630 WMAL?

-RADAR

Has anyone ever made their own AM antenna?

As in cheap or free out of stuff nerds have in the basement?

[Pexster]

There are two basic ways to go for an AM broadcast band antenna --

1) A longwire, or dipole antenna

2) A directional loop

The longwire will receive signals the strongest where they come broadside to the antenna, so if you want a station to the North of you, run the wire East-to-West.

The directional loop will be much more directional (as the name implies). You can build this on a wood frame about 2-3 feet square. I'll try to find a plan for this.

The 1st option requires a lot of space, preferably out in your yard, but attic is better than nothing. The 2nd option is more work, but can give you some good "nulls" useful for canceling out interfering signals.

What kind of receiver do you have, and what antenna connections are on the back? One or two terminals?