Halicrafter s-120/ Halicrafter 118

[BrettL]

I got these receivers from a friend of mine about 6 years ago and only hooked them up once. I hooked up a piece of copper wire to the back of them. The wire was about 30 ft long. The reason I used this wire was because it was readily available and I didnt want to cut it so I just hooked it to the receiver. Both of these radios are actually in great appearance considering their age. They still have the tube charts on the bottom with other various paper stickers on them. I noticed the s-120 looked like it had a telescopic antenna of some sort on the back of it but is missing. It has 3 lugs in the back for external hookup. The Hali 118 looks like it did not come with a antenna but has external hookups using 2 lugs.

I would like to know what would be a good length of copper wire to hook up to these radios? What to do with the ground? Use same length for ground and float? Would i need to tap a rod in the earth and put the ground on there?

If i remember correctly the last time i ran wires to the external antenna hookup they were just laid across the ground and the "skip" conditions were very high that day and it picked up people from all sorts . I tuned it across every frequency and could not understand most of them for I am a english speaker only. It picked up several distant and local HAM stations.

 

[BrettL]

Well, i attached a 25 ft bare wire to the external antenna side of the s-120. I got distant broad cast stations , multiple religious networks, several people talking in languages i don't recognize, fm broadcast, and I got HAM operators checking in on the net doing roll call. All 4 bands work. Just seems like a Hunk-a-Junk to me. Cool piece to look at otherwise just a closet ornament. DONT need anymore of those!

I also used a FM loop antenna and got same results.

I could hook to an old vhf/uhf antenna but not worth the effort.

 

[TheSpaceMann]

Just run the longest wire you can for an antenna. You might also want to try dipoles on different bands for directivity.

 

[ka3jjz]

These radios weren't really amateur radio gear (altho they were certainly used for this service at the time...) - they are vintage communications receivers going back many years. I had a friend who restored an old S-120 back when tubes were still in vogue...brings back a lot of memories.

As to the ground; while that's not really NECC standards, yes, a ground rod driven into the earth will do for the moment. We've had numerous discussions about proper RF grounding in the various forums, and a well worded Google search will turn this up. Obviously you don't want to be ramming rods into frozen earth right now...

The subject of receive antennas is covered in another forum (link below, in blue) - so let us know how much room you have and what you're interested in hearing. These tube receivers don't overload so easily, so you've got a heckuva lot of options. Dipoles are certainly 1 option, particularly if you want to hear something from a particular part of the world, but there are many others.

Receive Antennas (below 30MHz) - The RadioReference.com Forums

Mike