Jeff, I'll start with the antenna length question. Don't worry about the overall length of your antenna. In the AM range, your antenna would have to be several hundred feet long to satisfy a quarter wavelength dipole at the midrange frequency of the band. The matching of the antenna to the radio's input (impedance) is a lot more important than anything else below a 1/4 wavelength. In summary, your radio will not have any noticeable difference in performance from the long antenna to the short one. Any drifting in frequency on a tuned station is usually due to thermal effects of the tubes that cause the local oscillator to fade in and out of phase on occasion. (This is the beauty of phase locked loops, but I digress here...) The modern power antenna replacement will work fine, but aesthetically will look a bit different since the crown of it has a real big piece, compared to the elegantly slim one of our vintage antennas. One thing to keep in mind is that there is a relay on the new antennas that raises it up upon powering up the unit, and then lowers it upon removing power to it. The old antenna is a bit different in that it uses polarity in one direction to raise the antenna, and then a reverse polarity to lower it via the switch on the dashboard. A simple solution involves building a small circuit with two high current diodes in order to maintain the same functionality. If you decide on the power antenna, I can provide you with a very easy to interface schematic. Chris Middlebrook 1962 Custom Southampton --- On Thu 11/03, Jeff Cantor < jcantor791@xxxxxxxxxxx > wrote: From: Jeff Cantor [mailto: jcantor791@xxxxxxxxxxx] |
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