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People around the world, from Shenzhen, China to Los
Angeles, California, have used beers cans to improve their radio reception.
Even so, most people I talked to about them, hadn't ever heard of them.
Once I described them a few dozen beer cans stacked one on top of
the other, with a cable or a radio antenna through the center they
usually remember seeing them, somewhere, sometime. Myself, I've never
made or used a beer can antenna before but today it just seemed like
it would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. Not that Ill empty enough
beer cans myself that would make just about anything sound a little
fuzzy. I just salvaged some that we had in our recycling bin.
From talking with several beer-can-antenna aficionados,
including one guy who takes his with him while traveling through Europe,
I've put together a few notes on how to make the best use of such an
antenna. First of all, don't confuse the "beer can antenna" with the
Beverage antenna. A Beverage antenna is actually named after Dr. Harold
T. Beverage, and he helped design the Beverage antenna in the 1920s.
It's is considered a precursor to contemporary "wave" antennas.
The beer can antenna, on the other hand, is not considered a precursor
to other technology so much as it's enjoyed or needed as an ingenious
way to pull in signals with recyclables.
Like I said, I haven't built one of these before, and the one I've got going right now is
pretty rudimentary. From the various resources I've pooled, Ive decided to go with the
soldered-beer-can method. For this, you should ideally use tin cans,
rather than the aluminum cans used for most sodas and canned drinks.
Of course, that means you may have to make your beer can antenna out
of something other than beer cans that is, unless you can get your
hands on some old beer cans. One person I talked with mentioned that
he'd heard a beer can antenna put to use in California. It was made
of out crushed Coke cans, though, so the reception was pretty poor
because of the aluminum.
How many beer cans you use is up to you. I've found at least one record of an antenna almost
50 feet long (that's about 120 average sized beer cans). Since it's probably best not to
try to gather enough beer cans in one day, you might go with the one-can-at
a time method -- soldering cans onto the antenna as they become available.
Just be sure to cut guide holes in each can, enough to let a coaxial
cable (like the one connected to your cable box) pass through cleanly.
Once you've got a tower of cans made, you're basically set to go from
there it's mostly a matter of figuring out what type of grounding and
connection works best with your radio. That's as far as I've gotten
with my preparation, though my antenna is just a couple feet long right
now, and not very impressive. Right now, I'm looking at the back of
my CCRadio and thinking of just connecting the coaxial cable to the
external antenna jacks. We'll see how that works.
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please let me know. I'd be happy to take a look at your Web site and
see what we can do. Good-bye for now, Carlos. About
the author
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