Why does touching an Antena improve reception?

In my experience, with the old Rabbit Ears, and on my cars XM box (Roady2) when ever I touch the antenna, or the box, the reception improves dramatically.

Why is this?

Gonna guess that it removes static electricity.

Or, you are becoming part of the antenna.

Your body is an electrical conductor, therefore when you touch the antenna, your body is acting as an antenna (you are an extension of the antenna). If your TV is sitting on a large metal rack, you could probably improve reception by touching the antenna to it. I remember seeing a device that uses your household electrical wiring in this fashion.

Excuse me . . .

If you are going to ask this question you have to see the episode of “The Honeymooners” where Ralph and Norton go in together to buy a TV. Too funny!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming . . .

And the episode of “Weeds” where Andy and Sanjay can’t get anything but the shopping network on the grow house TV unless they stand in front of it on one leg.

I grew up on top of a (small) mountain in the middle of the woods in New Hampshire. The woods cancelled out the mountains. We got four channels with reasonable reception–two ABC channels, one NBC, and PBS. In the nineties, when the baseball playoffs were on CBS, I used to watch the whole thing, LCS and World Series, sitting three feet in front of the TV with one hand on the antenna so I could see the picture in a heavy snowstorm of static, rather than a full-blown blizzard.

Similarly, if you have a car with keyless entry, you can increase the range of the transmitter by touching it to the underside of your chin.

The theory and workings involved in antenna are sometimes regarded as resembling a black art, with arcane secrets.

Most antenna work better with some link to the ground plane, earth, but obviously you can’t do a direct connection as you would also ground your signal(there are lots of caveats on this due to the effects of frequency, wavelengths and the like)

If you look at many recievers, like the one on your hi fi, you’ll see it has a connection which make use of two conductors, one of which might have a small diagram suggesting it should be connected to earth or ground.

The ground connection should be connected through a capacitor, and that’s the clue about the OP.

Your body does act like a resistor to electricity, but as the frequwency of signal goes up, it behaves more like a capacitor, especially if you have footwear on.

One could also tie a wire to Tweety Bird and have him fwy way up in the air. Gweat weception. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!) :smiley:

It works both ways. Sometimes touching an antenna hurts the recieved signal, too.

You do realize that it’s the electrical conductivity of your body that’s making the improvement here? So that if you had taken 6 feet of any old wire you happened to have laying around, connected it to the antenna, and held the other end in your hand, it would have worked just as well – except that you could have been sitting across the room in a much more comfortable position.

Just in case this ever happens again.