This came up as part of inexpensive gift suggestions, USD 3.59.
The Original Slinky Walking Spring Toy, Metal Slinky
The Original Slinky Walking Spring Toy, Metal Slinky
Inexpensive "random wire" (Slinky)
- Thread starter krokus
- Start date
I tried making a slinky antenna when I first got my ticket and had just enough knowledge to get in trouble, even though I past the 25 question test. I was in an apartment, stretched it out across my ceiling and hooked into a tuner. When I keyed up the mic on the 10 meter band, I got my first RF burn and set of the fire alarm system from the RF. 😂 A slinky antenna will work, just make sure you know what you are doing.
I had one that I made that went from the top of my 40 foot TV tower to a plastic pipe with 90 degree elbow and a plug in it, drilled for an eyebolt. The Slinkies (There were 3 soldered together) were stretched out about 100 feet. The lower freqs were crazy strong on receive. It COULD be tuned at around 3.7 MHZ, but there was a lot of RF in my room when I keyed up. At CB/10M freqs, watch out. Not only wouldn't it tune, it would bite you pretty badly if you touched the wrong thing. But as a receive antenna, it was great. I had one I bought that was a dipole, and it was OK on the upper freqs, much better than my homebrewed one, but the one I made lasted much longer, as the bought one had the center connector rot due to UV exposure. My homemade one was sealed in that tool dip stuff, dipped into it several times and it died when a branch from a tree fell on it during a storm.
K4OGO using two Slinky as an antenna, with decent results.
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