"stan" wrote in message
oups.com...
I thought it was a joke but the reference to the ARRL handbook lends it
some credibility. In the article, the author took a rectangular piece
of wood and glued 4 dowel rods about 6" long into each corner and
wrapped the various lengths of antenna wire around the 4 rods, tied
them off and connected one end of each to a bus bar. The bus bar was,
in turn, connected to the tuner. He says the whole thing went into a
locker. I look to the experts to tell me wether this is something which
works or not.

Stan

I gather there are a lot of myths about radio antennae.

The fact seems to be that if you can effectively 'couple' the radio energy
from your transmitter to any (metal) object it will radiate the signal no
matter how inefficiently.

For example I talked to a radio amateur who uses his metallic cored clothes
line as an antenna! Fortunately he was/is on a hill in Scotland.

I also recall the Order Of Canada Radio/TV pioneer, Oscar Hierlihy, who
explained to me how he had managed to use the metal roof of his car, without
detaching or altering it in any way, as an amateur radio antenna and had
made some local contacts (QSOs) from his car without using any other
antenna!

In civil jurisdictions that 'do not allow external radio antenna/towers'
stories abound about coupling to metal gutters and downspouts, metal curtain
rods, metal air conditioning ducts or to metal flag poles and/or to wires
hidden on the surface of a wooden fence posts etc. One person claimed he
used the corrugated iron roof of his garden shed as a receiving and
transmitting antenna!

In other words almost anything can be made to 'radiate' (and by inference
thereby also 'receive') a radio signal. But how well a wrapped up bunch of
wires stuffed into a damp locker, low down to the water line will work
compared to a well insulated and properly coupled, antenna in the clear, as
far as is possible on a boat with wire rigging, would be unknown.

IMO it would be rather like putting kerosene instead of high grade gasoline,
into your sports car and with the engine sputtering and bucking and able
only to achieve one quarter top speed, saying, "See it works"! And so it
may, but not well.