One thing about portable shortwave radios, make sure you have diode protection on external ports on your radio ( some have 3.5 mm external ports ), otherwise connect the long wire to the whip antenna as most portable’s have diode protection on the whip antenna but not all radios have diode protection on their external dedicated 3.5 mm ports.
Shortwave wire length.
- Thread starter jjhendo
- Start date
This is a very good idea. The Tecsun PL880 is an example of what you're talking about. And being that the two antenna ports connect after the diode protection, you may as well just use the whip antenna and clip a wire to it, and save the hassle of worrying about the EXT antenna jack frying your RF amp transistor.
KB2GOM
Active Member
Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to yank anyone's chain here, but here's the question:
Do we know for sure that there is diode protection on the whip antenna but not on the antenna port? That's seems so counter-intuitive to not protect the port where you might be tempted to hook up a really long antenna.
I ask because: (1) I haven't look inside my PL880 and (2) I do use the antenna port for connecting longer antennas.
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