Tips for bending antennas?

Has anyone ever tried to make a Goldberg style lightning bolt antenna?

does a bent antennae have as accurate of a response as a straight one?

If you use a strangely shaped antennae then the EMF generated will be strangely shaped too. Also, have you tried using a strip-heater or oven rather than just a section-heater. The problem with using heaters is that if onely one section of the material is heated then only that part will bend. . .

The field will be shaped strangely but I'm thinking you could set up the lightning bolt so that the bends are visible to the audience and play perpendicular to the bends.

That shouldn't create much of a problem.

i am just thinking since your hand will not be as far from one section on the antwnannaae as another section because of a bend, it will not work so good

Peter Pringle touches on the subject when he discusses the Goldberg theremin with the lighning-bolt shaped antennae. Apparently they do affect the playability considerably and he has to replace them with normal antennae when he records.

I've managed to succesfully bend a loop aerial with a home-brew jig.

I used 6mm Dia Aluminium tubing with a 1mm wall.

I've converted some stills into a .WMV file, around 600K. If anyone would like it emailed, drop me a line and I'll send it.

It's made for use with the Silicon Chip/Jaycar Theremin Kit. More soon on this project!

Abdul
abdul.nathekar@blueyonder.co.uk

Thanks for the movie - I'll try to get it posted online very soon.

I've posted the .WMV file to the Project Tips page at:

http://www.thereminworld.com/miscprojects.asp

enjoy!

makes it look easy