Power Antenna

Posted by BlackBeerd On 2012/3/21 10:57:41

When I bought My '54 Clipper last June, the radio was not in it. They guy I bought it from let me pick one out of the pile that he had. Over the winter a friend of mine fixed it by putting in new capacitors and a new solid-state vibrator.

The power antenna was also missing so I went to AutoZone and bought a Metra Electronics 44-PW530. At 40 inches this is the longest one I found that is commonly available. Once I got it out the box I saw that it is made to wire into the radio and go up and down when the radio is turned on and off. But I wanted to use the original push/pull switch that is in the car. The problem with that is the antenna has a red and a blue wire for raising and lowering. Power to both wires makes it go up and power to just the red makes it go down. The switch in the car is a SPST so that seemed impossible with out changing the switch to a DPDT or adding a couple of relays.

After some noodling on it, I ended up putting in a diode between the wires. pulling the switch powers the blue wire and the diode lets power go to the red wire. Pushing the switch powers the red wire and the diode does not feed power back to the blue wire.

Now I'm cruising in full AM oldies on WGBW 1590.

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