This is 1m each of yellow and green PVC insulated 7 X 0.2 connection wire. 7 refers to the number of individual strands which can be seen in the picture. 0.2 is the individual strand diameter in mm. The 1m length will allow you to connect to things such as the top and bottom wire of farm or ranch fences. Where these fences are very long, high up on the moors, not covered in wet bushes, or out in Texas not so far away from some high power AM radio transmitter, the results can be very good indeed. That is why this crystal set design is made so that you can make it portable. Don't connect up when the fence is obviously electrified, which you can see clearly by the presence of plastic insulators on the fence wires.
In an ideal world, your antenna wire would be partly vertical, because AM radio stations use vertical polarisation. The long length of farm fences makes up for this, along with a phenomenom related to Beverage antennas.
What's the difference between an antenna and an aerial? An antenna is something that sticks up, like off of a wasp, so usually that's a VHF or above radio aerial where they are naturally shorter due to the shorter wavelength involved. Aerial is the ancient old codger term, which I think still applies when you're launching more than about 3 metres of wire. They can be used interchangeably. Antenna is the more modern word. It occasionally pleases me to use the word "aerial" where it is completely inappropriate, as on the Robert's R900 from the early 1980's. Where you might also have imagined that it was rather stating the obvious. VHF aerial, Maybe:)
Navigate Up
