How to fix loose portable radio antenna?
May 14, 2008 5:39 AM Subscribe
Portable radio antenna is loose and falling over. Can I fix?
I have a Sony ICF-SW7600GR radio that's about 6 months old. The antenna has suddenly begun flopping over instead of staying standing straight up. It does this whether or not it's fully extended. Obvious dirty jokes aside, what's causing this? I tried tightening the screw that seems to be holding the antenna in at its base, but it's already tight; I couldn't budge it. And yet the antenna seems loose, not at the hinge portion, but loose in its connection to the radio, if that makes sense.
I have a Sony ICF-SW7600GR radio that's about 6 months old. The antenna has suddenly begun flopping over instead of staying standing straight up. It does this whether or not it's fully extended. Obvious dirty jokes aside, what's causing this? I tried tightening the screw that seems to be holding the antenna in at its base, but it's already tight; I couldn't budge it. And yet the antenna seems loose, not at the hinge portion, but loose in its connection to the radio, if that makes sense.
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If you open the radio and tighten that nut, the antenna will be tight again... for a while.
To get the nut to stay tight, you'll need to glue it in place after tightening it. Any old glue that sticks to metal will probably work passably well in this application - just loosen the nut off, put drop of glue on threads, tighten nut down, leave alone until glue has set - but if you want to do it the professional way, go to an auto parts place or good hardware store and pick up a little bottle of "thread lock". Blue Loctite threadlock, or its same-coloured cheap generic equivalent, should do the job well; it'll come in handy for any other application where nuts or bolts tend to come loose, too.
The nice thing about this sort of threadlock is that it cures "anaerobically" - which is to say, it solidifies only between the mating surfaces of nut and bolt, where the air can't get to it. This means that the threadlock in the bottle will pretty much never dry out, saving you from the I-bought-a-$10-bottle-of-glue-and-only-got-to-use-two-drops-of-it Super Glue Syndrome.
(Blue Loctite is the "Medium Strength" kind, that'll let you undo the nut again later if you have to. There are other grades of thread locker, for when you want a nut and bolt to behave as much as possible as if they've been welded into one lump.)
posted by dansdata at 6:41 AM on May 14, 2008