[image] Can a vegetable atop your antenna help pull in distant stations? It seems so! This week on Car Talk, Ben from Jackson, Mississippi told a folkloric tale involving his dad, a Ford LTD, a country service station… and an Idaho potato. You can hear Ben's call with Tom and Ray right here. ) …

Oh, yes indeed! A potato can and has functioned as an antenna. In high school in the early 1970s I drove a 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix (white, with red interior). Someone broke off the antenna, leaving only a four or five inch stub. (Remember: I’m in high school, and this 1963 car has no tape player. Di…

A potato would not work as an antenna if there were no portion of the mast left. But in each case above, there is a portion of the mast and that is the antenna. The potato forms a “hat antenna”. A hat antenna is an antenna with a disk in to to capacitively load the antenna making it appear to be …

I am surprised that the automobile manufacturers didn’t adopt this system as standard equipment. When the car would come in for servicing, part of the service would be to change the potato for the radio.

The antenna used is about 400 feet tall with spokes radiating outward from the top. The spokes act like a giant capacitor to the radio signal making it think it is feeding a 4100 foot tall antenna. Because the spokes resemble a hat, it got the name “hat antenna”. It is also common with HAM radio …

A friend of mine from years past used to solder a Brillo pad to the top of his antenna. This was back in the days of AM and a little FM. He swore it increased his range. My vehicles could never pull in WLS or WOWO but his brought them in as clear as the local channels. I just never could get over th…

WOWO! That brings back memories! Back when I was in high school–in the early-mid '60s, NY area rock & roll radio stations only had public affairs and religious programming on Sunday nights. What was a teenager to do? Well, believe it or not, my little Zenith transistor radio had very little trou…

@VDCdriver –I am a little before your time, so I listened to WOWO in the mid to late 1950s. The DJ’s back then were Bob Siever, Jack Underwood, Bob Chase and another one that I don’t remember. I lived about 60 miles from Fort Wayne and WOWO was a 50,000 watt station, so the signal was very clear. …

I have also heard that this could be done as a short-term solution. The same principles that the potato can be used as an antenna are the same principles used when a potato is functioning as a battery powering a low-voltage lode like a digital clock or watch (1.5 volt DC or less). The problem with …

My antenna was snapped off. I tried the potato trick. All I could pick up was Irish music

Potato-'Tenna?

The Show

keith July 14, 2012, 7:30pm 5

One example, if you have an “atomic clock” or “atomic watch”, the signal that keeps it in time comes from a hat antenna in Bolder, Co. The signal is a LF (low frequency 60 kHz) signal that usually requires a very tall antenna. For this frequency, the antenna would be about 4100 feet tall.

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Potato-'Tenna?

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