Started playing with my SDR again and wanted to listen into some VHF/UHF activity but the problem was I had no reasonable antenna for indoor use and a quick wire dipole was out of the question because I can't easily tune it each time I monitor a different frequency range. I could have made a quick bow-tie wideband antenna like those ones TV sets once had and flip it vertical but they have negative gain over a regular dipole. Money was also out of the question otherwise I would have bought a proper outdoor discone antenna and connected a receive amplifier.
So it was off to the junk bin... Had a few 4.5" telescoping antennas laying around that when collapsed are resonant around 600MHz and when expanded they cover the generic FM broadcast band.
Was looking for a quick way to mount the antennas though so I could adjust them as I didn't have the original swivel bases for them.
Old AC power plug to the rescue!
Pretty self explanatory. The AC wall prongs have a hole through them and fit perfectly inside the base of the telescoping antennas, and since it has screw connectors originally for wiring power, just run coax through the back and split it and screw it on.
Might actually make a decent field antenna since I can easily swap out coax cable to it and if it gets lost or destroyed there is no loss.
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