Using a van as an aerial

Liz Tuddenham · 2025-07-16T09:18:52+00:00

I recently spent the night in my van camped in a woodland glade anddecided to try out an idea i had been thinking about for shortwavebroadcast reception.The receiver was an Eddystone EC10 which I recently restored, it has a'floating' aerial input circuit of nominally 50 ohms. I connected the'earth' socket to the receiver casing and the 'aerial' socket to alength of wire in the conventional way.Instead of hanging up the wire, I laid it along the ground under thevan, so it had greater capacitive coupling to the ground than it did tothe van. The receiver was on the wooden 'kitchen worktop' in the van,so it had greater capacitance coupling to the van than to the groundoutside. This meant that, in effect, one terminal of the aerial inputcircuit was connected to ground and the other was connected to the van -so the van was acting as the aerial.The results above 5 Mc/s were quite acceptable, with excellent receptionfrom medium-to-strong stations and hardly any interference. Below 5Mc/s, where the capacitive coupling was ineffective, the bands werealmost silent.If I had used an earthing stake and electrically joined the receiverearth to the van body, I might have had even better results.

Jul 16, 2025 Last reply: 1 year ago 20 Replies

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John R Walliker 1 year ago

I tried it once as well. I discovered that a neighbour had a massive earth leakage fault. Audio transmission range was less than shouting distance.

John

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Using a van as an aerial

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