Interesting Ebay Find

[ArkTex]

Shortwave Radio Antenna Helical SWL SW DX realistic shack sangean grundig eton + | eBay

Antenna covers All Shortwave Bands. The Worldtenna Helical All Band Shortwave Antenna is like having a large 65 foot outdoor antenna. (85' if you were to count the hook up wire)Yet the Worldtenna Helical when set up only takes up About 7 foot of space.

www.ebay.com

Can anyone that knows about antennas tell me what I found?

It just seems like a slinky attached to some PVC with some wire coming out of it.

Just wondering if this is even somewhat decent for it's price.

 

[mmckenna]

It just seems like a slinky attached to some PVC with some wire coming out of it.

It is.
Commonly called "Slinky antenna". It's just a random length wire, not tuned, no matching transformer.
It'll work, but there's nothing magical about it. You could make your own pretty easily. Or, save a bunch of money and just buy some wire.

I've seen dipoles made out of two of them.

 

[Ubbe]

Remember that antennas needs a large area to receive the radio energy in the air and smaller antennas are always a compromise. A straight long wire are the best but you can curl it up to still make it tuned to a frequency and make it shorter but it will receive less signal. There is no way to make a small antenna work as good as a big antenna. But if a receiver are not good enough it could overload from a big antenna and could actually work better with a smaller antenna. Portable receivers are usually designed to be used with small antennas. Shortwave antenna size are usually restricted by the location and the area you have at your disposal and might anyhow force you to use compromised antennas.

/Ubbe