Subject: Phone line as SW antenna Date: 1 Aug 1995 07:01:59 GMT [Last modified 07-Mar-95] Changes preceeded by "|". This article describes how to use a phone line as a shortwave antenna. WARNING: Connecting unapproved devices to phone lines may be illegal in your area. There may also be a potential shock hazard. Use at your own risk. Performance will vary depending on the kind of line you have. Overhead lines usually make okay antennas, while underground lines generally don't. A highpass filter is used to remove signals below the shortwave bands. It rejects interference from local AM stations and decouples the receiver from the phone line. In addition, all phone line voltages, including ringing, are eliminated and thus will not harm the receiver. In addition, a lowpass filter can be used to reject interference from FM stations. If you use both filters, connect the output of the first filter to the input of the second (don't forget to connect their ground terminals together). It doesn't matter which filter is connected first. By the way, these filters also work well with random wire antennas. Just connect the antenna in place of the phone line. The filter(s) should be connected to the phone line in this manner: Phone line RF connector red -------- center cond. / \ or o----| |--------------------------|-o | To receiver green | | \ / | FILTER | 50 ohm coax | ground | | | or o----| |----------------------------+ N.C. -------- shield N.C. = no connect. I have tried connecting the phone line ground (yellow wire) to this teminal, but reception has been better without it (if you do this, play it safe and put a .01 uF capacitor in series). If another ground is available, you can connect it here. Someone wrote asking about lightning protection. I haven't thought much about it because thunderstorms are rare in my area. Most phone lines have lightning arrestors on them where they enter the house, but my suggestion is to unplug the antenna when not in use if you experience frequent thunderstorms. The original credit for the highpass and lowpass filters goes to Paul Blumstein and John Shalamskas, respectively. Edited versions of their articles are included here: Date: 09 Jan 91 00:54:08 GMT From: paulb@harley.TTI.COM (Paul Blumstein) Subject: BC Band Hi-Pass Filter The following ascii-schematic diagram is a high pass filter that will filter out Broadcast Band (MW) stations. I found it a great boon to my shortwave listening since local MW stations overload my ATS-803A front end & appear in SW, especially with a long antenna. If you remember my antenna saga, I went from 50 feet to 150 feet & had overload problems causing me to cut back to 50 feet. (Even at 50 feet, I still have some MW interference). I took the advice of Gary Coffman and looked up filters in the ARRL Handbook. With the filter in place, I intend to try to increase my antenna length again. Anywho, here is the filter, for interested parties. --------||---+----||-----+----||----------- } } { { } } -------------+-----------+----------------- The outer capacitors are 1500 pf ceramic disks. The inner capacitor is 820 pf ceramic disk. The squiggly things are coils (two total). Each one is 2.7 uh. (a close value will do). Date: 12 Jan 91 00:44:25 GMT From: bill@videovax.tv.tek.com (William K. McFadden) Subject: Re: BC Band Hi-Pass Filter I built the filter that Paul Blumstein posted recently and measured it on a gain-phase analyzer. Here are its characteristics: 100 KHz -120dB 500 KHz -68dB 1000 KHz -38dB 1600 KHz -15dB 2100 KHz -3dB The source and load impedances were 50 ohms. Because the filter has five elements, the attenuation is 30dB per octave. The measurements confirmed this. This filter seems to be a pretty good compromise between interference attenuation and passband response. There is very little attenuation in the 120m band and above. It could use a little more attenuation at the upper end of MW, which could be done with more stages or a higher cutoff frequency. Alternatively, you could build two of these filters and put them in series. (Since two 1500pF capacitors in series are really 750pF, you could eliminate one cap.) Just for fun, I decided to put 470 ohms in series with the input to see how the filter performs with an antenna mismatch. The characteristics were: 100 KHz -105dB 500 KHz -60dB 1000 KHz -35dB 1600 KHz -15dB 2300 KHz -3dB These figures are normalized to the passband response of -15dB, which is due to the impedance mismatch between the source and load and would have been there without the filter. Hence, the filter works almost as well in spite of the mismatch, which is good news to those who use longwire antennas. Date: 22 Apr 92 08:59:33 GMT From: johns@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (John Shalamskas) Subject: Construction of filters for SW reception Several people have asked for construction details of the filters I built for my DX-440. The high-pass filter helped some, but in my location the VHF/UHF broadcasters are also causing problems. So, I dug out the ARRL handbook and chose a 7-element Chebyshev low-pass design that is -3 dB at 35 MHz, -20 dB at 43 MHz, and -50 dB at 64 MHz (all calculated; it works well in practice!) LOW-PASS FILTER (Rejects FM, TV, etc.) 0.36 uH 0.42 uH 0.36 uH signal -------+--UUU--+--UUUUU--+--UUU--+------- signal | | | | 82 ___ 180___ 180___ ___ 82 pF --- pF--- pF--- --- pF shield | | | | shield braid -------+-------+----+----+-------+------- braid | chassis ground I had to do a little more improvising at this point. I used .33 uH instead of .36, and .66 uH instead of .42, but it works fine. The 5-lug terminal strips were perfect for these circuits, since there are 4 lugs plus a grounded lug. All "ground" connections go to the lug that is mounted to the chassis, and the other 4 lugs are used for each of the connections on the signal line. One terminal strip is used per filter. Since both filters were necessary to clean up the hash, I am going to put them both into one box when I get the time. The proper way to connect them is in series, i.e. signal in ------- filter 1 -------- filter 2 -------- signal out There is no difference between ends. They are "bilateral" which means you can't possibly hook them up backwards. (In the above schematics, left and right ends are interchangeable.) COIL WINDING You can make the coils yourself using this formula: L = 0.2 * B^2 * N^2 / (3B + 9A + 10C) L is inductance, in uH A is length of coil, in inches B is mean diameter of coil, in inches C is the diameter of the wire, in inches N is the number of turns For small wire, you can assume C = 0. PARTS SOURCE All of the parts for these filters can be obtained from the following source: Digi-Key 701 Brooks Av S P.O. Box 677 Thief River Falls, MN 56701-0677 USA Voice: 800-344-4539 FAX: 218-681-3380 PART DIGI-KEY PART NO. 82 pF capacitor P4023 180 pF capacitor P4027 820 pF capacitor P4184 1500 pF capacitor P4187 0.33 uH inductor M8007 0.39 uH inductor M8008 2.7 uH inductor M8018 The cost of these parts is less than $1 each. -- Bill McFadden Tektronix, Inc. P.O. Box 500 MS 58-639 Beaverton, OR 97077 bill@tv.tv.tek.com, ...!tektronix!tv.tv.tek.com!bill Phone: (503) 627-6920 CAUTION: Don't look into laser beam with remaining eye.