You may have accepted static and poor reception on your AM radio as a fact of life. The fault may not be with your signal or even your location in relation to the transmitting tower. It could be the fault of your radio’s antenna. The ferrite coil antenna in most AM radios is a small rectangular bar that is just large enough to allow the radio to receive local stations. You can improve your reception by improving your antenna. An edge-wound loop antenna uses the X-shaped frame constructed from 1-by-6 inch boards. The ends of the board are notched at half-inch intervals and, as the name suggests, the copper wire is wound around the edges of the frame. In both cases, the two ends of the wire are connected to a variable 365-picofarad capacitor that is used to tune the antenna to the correct frequency for the radio station. Use the small handsaw to make eight, half-inch deep slots, one-half an inch apart on all four ends of the frame. Wrap 22-gauge copper wire around the outside of the frame through the slots. Mount the variable capacitor anywhere on the inside surface of the frame and attach both ends of the copper wire to the capacitor’s terminals.
