Need a portable shortwave antenna

I'm looking at purchasing a icom rx7 and although its not the primary use of this radio, I would like to listen to shortwave. So, i'm trying to find a half decent shortwave antenna.

I would like it to be a hank of wire with a SMA connector on one end (is this enough?), but what kind of wire and how long should it be? It needs to be portable enough that I'd carry it every day.

My google-fu isn't up to par to find these details, which I would assume it would be easy to find.

I know some of you guys are hams, so hopefully you can point me in the right direction.

Thanks,
Kris

I use an Original Slinky with a 20' feed wire when RVing. I use it with medium-wave, not shortwave, but it fills the bill. It's easy to store, can be deployed quickly either vertically or, running paracord through it, horizontally.

You can find some info on them on Google.

I got this with my pocket SW radio and it makes a huge difference: http://www.countycomm.com/swantenna.htm

It just clips onto the radio's built-in antenna. I don't know how well it compares to other options, in fact I'd be interested in what some experts think about it. But it is light and compact when stowed in its own wind-up reel.

Steve

I have a grundig.....frs 200? can't remember right now.....anyway.....I clip a length of wire right onto the telescopic antenna.... use a gator clip. You'd be amazed at how much you can pull in. Wire lenghth? Don't remember....30-40 feet. For expediency.....grab a length of wire and see what happens.... coil it into a small tin or use the earbud holder that comes with the ear bud earphones as a spool.....that should do.

I use one of these and I think it works well.

for listening, longer is pretty much better - get a fly fishing reel, load up a lot of say 20 or 18 gage wire (if you can find enameled 'bell wire' - that's great) - roll it up, and you're good

On the cheaper end, scrap speaker wire on a camping clothesline reel ($3 at Walmart) makes an acceptable portable antenna. You can find semi-commercial versions of this as "yo-yo" antennas.

Getting a decent connection to the SMA antenna jack is a bit of a pain. The SMA jack can be fragile and doesn't tolerate a lot of strain and hacks like just jamming a paperclip into the center socket. The best would be to solder up short coaxial cable with the right SMA connector on one end and maybe alligator clips on the other for the antenna. But if you aren't up for that solder challenge, you probably will want a SMA to BNC adapter. BNC is a larger and somewhat more common antenna connector, especially for scanners. Then a BNC to "binding post" adaptor makes it easy to try different wire antennas.

If you get serious about shortwave listening, you'll probably want to try grounding the scanner for somewhat better reception. You can try a alligator clip connection to a copper cold water line as the ground. On the scanner side, connect to the shell of the antenna connector or even some grounded part of the chassis, including the negative side of the batteries.

I hope you enjoy playing with shortwave. The glory days of "SWL" are fading but there are still stations on the air.

Thanks all!

Would something like this give you more access to other bands other then Shortwave?

I'm a N00b so be kind ;-)

Kris

another question...

Speaker wire was mentioned as one form of wire to use... and since its a wire with two separte copper wires, does the shortwave antenna need to complete a circuit to work (i.e. go out and come back), or do you just pull apart the speaker wire to get one strand?

I have one of the Countycomm reel-type antennas because I travel, but this one was recently pointed out to our local ham club as a good deal, well-constructed: http://www.2wayelectronix.com/Dual-band-2m-70cm-Slim-Jim-Antenna-with-16-rg-58-dual-slim-16.htm. It covers 2M and 70cm bands very well, I'm thinking of getting one for my Yaesu HT and trying it out.

Lono... thanks for that url!

My wife and I made one of those for her dual band HT. It does extend the transmit range beyond the range of the rubber duck that came with the radio. Location makes a big difference, too. Higher is better (note the long length of the feed line in that linked antenna); away from metal and brick buildings, trees, etc.

Those antennas can overdrive the receiver - the receiver expects the crap signal the rubber duck delivers. I don't know of any damage from the stronger signal, but it can make the reception difficult to understand.

On the clip-on reel antennas, I have one from radio shack that clips onto the metal extended antenna of my radio shack receiver. I'm not sure how well that would work on the VX7 antenna, which is coated in rubber or something. Obviously, RF gets through the insulation. I'd say it's worth a try, but also try wrapping the wire antenna around the rubber duck a dozen or so times to see if that works any better. For HF reception, a long wire will work much better than the rubber duck; again, location is key. Resonance is good, but for receiving only, it's not as necessary as for transmit.

Could you take the reel antenna and cut off the aligator or clip at the end of them and solder on a SMA connector? Or would you be better off making a cable with an SMA connector on one end and ending in aligator clip to use it on many things?

SMA connectors (all connectors, RCA, BNC, whatever) have a positive and a negative side. The clip of course, has only one. If you do connect your wire antenna to an SMA connector, talk to someone about whether you should ground the antenna wire. It's beyond my knowledge. My guess is that for receive it won't make a noticeable difference, but find a good BB for this kind of stuff and ask there. You need the ground for transmission, but I'm not at all sure about reception.