When you "can't" have an antenna

By: eXe

Many people may want to be able to listen to the ham bands or shortwave but are living in less than optimal conditions for setting up an antenna. They could be restricted by CC&R's or other rules where they live that do not allow external antennas. They could also not have enough space to set up a larger wire antenna outside (Apartments are an example of this). I am lucky here and can have pretty much anything I want outside but I was thinking about giving this indoor antenna a try since the radio was located in my store room and I did not want to run yet another wire antenna outside. The results were impressive. The idea came from a story I had read on a clandestine radio site a few years ago. It showed how to set up an antenna inside your house so no one would know you were monitoring.

This is the radio, its a pretty basic AM/FM shortwave and it sits in my reloading area of my store room. I was able to listen to AM and FM with the supplied antenna but shortwave was nothing but dead air.

I decided to do this as cheaply as possible and picked up some speaker wire at radio shack for around 4 dollars. I then picked up some thumb tacks from the grocery store to put the "antenna"

up in the room. I split the speaker wire down the middle, and tacked it up around the top of the room all the way around.

Here is a shot of the antenna coming out of the radio. This is where I plug it in.

Here is a shot of the antenna running around the top of the room.

Another shot of the other side.

To give you an idea of the difference it makes, here is the signal meter (Note arrow) without the antenna plugged in

And here is the signal meter (Note arrow) with the antenna plugged in. Full scale signal!

This antenna runs all around the top perimeter of my store room ceiling and pulls in signals from all around the world. It is not tuned for any specific band or frequency. It is just a simple way that anyone can set up a small hidden shortwave antenna at home for monitoring the bands without anyone knowing.