My radio is louder when I touch it?
So I bought a crappy, $10 portable radio to listen to while I work. I work outside in farm country, so I usually have a bad signal. But when I hold it up and touch the top of it with one finger on each side, it gets louder, almost twice as loud. A lot louder. I'm not looking for some bullshit answer like 'woah you have super powers', anyone got a scientific answer for why touching it makes it louder?
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
That's normal. Your body is acting as an antenna.
Metro and David have it right. Forget the tinfoil, that might make it worse. Technically, your body is coupling to the radio capacitivily and acting like an extension of the internal radio antenna. If you don't want to hold on to it, try wrapping a half dozen turns of wire around it and extending that a few feet away from the radio and other objects. That would be an inductive coupling I presume since it's getting louder, that you are listening to AM. An increase of antenna height might help a little but keeping it away from metal objects that might shield it will help more.
X-Ray pretty much has it right until the tinfoil sentence......
Your body is acting like an antenna..... That's all....... The antenna in the radio is probably not very sensitive..... Your body as well as wire and other metal objects can act like an antenna and increase the radios RF input signal - hence making it louder.....
You are in effect acting as an antenna and pulling in a stronger signal. You may want to try bringing some aluminum foil to work and placing your radio on that or if it has an external antenna jack just put a piece of wire in it. You can vary the length of wire to get different signal strengths. If you try aluminum foil just about a foot or so is enough.