Circuit Diagram Description Wound on a 3 foot length of PVC pipe, the long loopstick antenna was an experiment to try to improve AM radio reception without using a long wire or ground. It works fairly well and greatly improved reception of a weak station 130 miles away. A longer rod antenna will probably work better if space allows. The number of turns of wire needed for the loopstick can be worked out from the single layer, air core inductance formula: Inductance = (radius^2 * turns^2) / ((9*radius)+(10*length)) where dimensions are in inches and inductance is in microhenrys. The inductance should be about 230 microhenrys to operate with a standard AM radio tuning capacitor (33-330 pF). The 3 foot PVC pipe is wound with approximately 500 evenly spaced turns of #24 copper wire which forms an inductor of about 170 microhenrys, but I ended up with a little more (213uH) because the winding spacing wasn't exactly even. A secondary coil of about 50 turns is wound along the length of th...