Hi Bob - maybe this will help ...
In my excitement to test the 23 foot reel-up, the first thing I did was hook it up backwards. That is, I clamped on the clip that serves as a mounting clip with no connections inside it, and reeled it out the wrong way where the clip actually has metallic fingers inside. Swapped the clips around the right way, and bingo.
Hey, it happens to the best of us.
For this type of ultra small radio, we don't over-analyze the antenna. The major objective is to just get it away from noise and close to being outside.
The reel-up can be made into any number of makeshift shapes for this application. Up and over something, made into a circle or square around a window, not even fully reeled out either. Temporary positioning can be done quickly with blue painters-tape so you don't mar any surfaces.
Throw it simply on the floor reeled out? Sure - it *might* be enough to provide a good signal-to-noise although directionality is not the major concern. Experiment. Reel it away from your operating position to somewhere else in the house.
Interestingly enough, simply thrown on the floor clipped to the radio may be *enough* to allow for even vhf airband and fm reception. Again, predicting directionality, impedance and so forth is obviously not the primary thought - just getting enough signal away from your indoor noise sources is.
This is classic old-timey stuff. Run the wire down along your baseboards etc. Too noisy? Change it.
More advanced uses might be to carry along just a small 3 foot jumper of wire, and inductively / capacitively couple it to an existing structure for kicks. Ie, wrap a bunch of turns around the *collapsed* whip, and with the small pigtail left, just place it next to something metallic. Maybe use the blue-tape method. At the ballpark and wonder if inductively coupling to a safety railing might work? Try it. You'd get thrown out if you stretched out the 23 foot reel.
For more AM BCB stuff, perhaps you'd like to try one of the small BCB loops that inductively couple to small radios like this - like the TERK or Grundig AN200 where you simply place the radio near the loop and tweak and turn it and have fun that way. That's a pretty potent portable combo at the picnic table.
It's a palm-sized portable radio that wants to be outside, but with indoor noise, it calls for experimentation, rather than ideal antenna engineering.
Hmmm.... how about clipping a jumper to the center conductor of your discone, and wrapping a few turns of the jumper around the collapsed antenna? Yes, you probably could make a direct connection to the whip with the jumper, but I'd recommend trying the "wrap a bunch of turns around the whip" idea first.
Super directionality, impedance matching and so forth are not the major concern. Just experiment to get the best signal to noise with this type of radio if one can't get outside.
The neat thing about the CCrane Skywaves without an external antenna jack is that is provides a necessary break for those of us who live behind computer modeling screens and wonder "lets clip this around a shopping cart handle and see what happens." As long as we don't over-analyze it, it can be a load of fun.
