Long Wire Shortwave Antenna - Building the AMP-3 Covert Communicator
I call this the covert
communicator I
Use these so often. I just figured I'm going to make something. That's
easy to
Store something that's reliable and in functional
Well let us return to normal order here on this channel
am three, and I've been getting a lot of requests for my
Communicator antenna, and I'll post some links up above here
I have two shortwave antennas that I have made and they're on our
Website one of them that I am shown in previous videos is what I call my heavy duty
long haul shortwave antenna if you will it's very
robust and
It's a little bit on the large size not too large
it's certainly something you can throw in a day pack, or a go bag without problems, but
This is its little brother. Okay. I call this the covert
Communicator well I'm going to show a video here as I make one of these this
little guy fits in a small lock sack, and this is 10 feet of
Tether cord county comm and
That's included in our antenna so that you've got
Some way of securing the antenna I recognize that these antennas are going to be deployed at different times in different
situations, and it's really meant to be a flexible antenna that you can sort of MacGyver if you will to
Meet whatever the prevailing conditions are so let me take you along on a build on one of these antennas
So I'll show you the tools that I use I use a number of
tools to help facilitate a build
probably the most important is going to be a wire stripper and in this case I have it locked down with a little piece of
masking tape
Just to keep it on the right size. We're using
24
Sometimes 26 gauge depending upon what I can get hookup wire stranded hookup wire on one end
there is a
small mini
Cord lock and an alligator clip and I go through the effort of putting a little heat shrink tubing on all of these
antennas on any of the exposed parts just to make it more comfortable in hand now the purpose of this mini cord lock is to
Act as a strain relief and you can slide it anywhere you want on the length of antenna wire
Perhaps you want a tail of I don't know 2 feet of
Loose wire that you can
Then use the alligator clip to attach to the antenna on your shortwave radio and on the other end is
a
Eyelet loop that is soldered in place and then again covered in
Heat shrink tubing that's a place where you might want to secure
your
tether cord to maybe hook it up to a
Flagpole a fence post whatever and then of course use the
Cord lock to act as a strain relief the whole antenna
25 foot antenna is wound up on a little
Flexible spool, so I use a number of tools to make it easy
I got an odd light
Which has been very helpful that
Just gives me some task lighting my eyes are getting tired these days too much computer work
And so I use a pair of reading glasses and that really helps me quite a bit and then a third hand
again with a magnifying glass and
That just makes assembling these antennas so much easier. I went to a local electronics store and bought a
Well I bought a good grade
soldering iron and a soldering iron holder and that has
Really made building these antennas so much easier and one thing I found that's been quite helpful is
I use a tip cleaner and that
really, has
made soldering so much easier wire stripper for the right gauge wire that I'm using on my
Bigger antennas I use an automatic stripper and that just makes it even faster. I prefer to use a small
heat gun for my
Heat shrink tubing I know a lot of people use a butane lighter, and I've done that in the past
I just find this much quicker for production work and a lot more
Focused. This is a nice way to keep a long wire antenna
with a small shortwave radio in you're ready to go gear and
Have been always available the whole idea behind this is that if you
pull out the
Telescopic antenna on most of these shortwave radios, it's just really not adequate for a good
reception but you can make quite a difference by just taking a piece of
Wire you don't have to make anything this fancy. I just make this
Because it's just much more convenient. You can even just take wire and wrap it around the
Telescoping antenna and then stretch it out you're basically just giving yourself better ears
We're having trouble getting focused