Well I picked up one of the all time great long distance Medium Wave (MW) aka AM Radios, the Panasonic RF-2200.
Sadly all but the last two of the 7 section telescopic antenna were broken off. No problem right? Quickly, to the internet, GeekMan.
Download the Service Manual. Check. Find antenna part number. Check. Hit eBay. Epic Fail. No such part on eBay. Dr. Google probably knows. He didn’t.
All I found were a lot of posts of other folks looking for them too. So it’s is clearly time to improvise.
Okay, this is going to be destructive. No other way around it. First lets order a replacement whip antenna. I found a 38.5″ whip antenna on Amazon for seven bucks. Actually 2 antennas came.
Now your mileage may vary here but I opted to keep the bottom 7mm section in my restoration/repair. You may opt not to. First thing I did was cut the brass retainer off of the NEW antenna. This destroys the 7mm barrel. I slid the 6mm section (and the remainder of the intact antenna out). Keep the two brass retainers for later. Once you push the antenna down past the cut the retainers will fall off then you can slide the remainder of the antenna up and out.
Now lets look at the guts of the Panasonic. We are now going to:
• Remove 2 phillips screws and carefully remove antenna taking care not to break the wires.
• Remove the 13mm nut and pull the antenna assembly out.
• Cut off the swaged bottom of the old antenna and slide the damaged part out.
Cut. No Fear!
Now you are left with a 7mm barrel that looks good on top and looks not so great on the bottom. No worries. Slide the new antenna in with the two retainers in place. The antenna will be okay except for that you could push it all the way out of the bottom. We’ll fix that.
Take a dremel wheel, clean up the rough edge, then carefully remove a ring of chrome from around the bottom.
Insert antenna from top. Push through. Install retainers, push in and then apply a big fat bead of solder around the brass ring you made. Make sure to let it get on the bottom a little and inside a little. It doesn’t take much to get good solid retention. If you look close you can see I have just a tiny lifted ridge of solder ring.
Put it all back together.
Profit.
Worlds worst video. Sorry. I didn’t review the video before I put everything back together and I’m not taking it all apart to shoot another video.
And here’s the wrap up video.
Thank you, this worked perfect for my RF-2200 radio! I also had the bottom 7mm piece. I originally just tried putting the replacement antenna through the base but there was not enough friction and I measured the replacement antenna base and it read 6.78mm where the original was reading 6.95 so I think the replacement antenna was a little to small, but I did what you did and kept the original lower section and it worked perfect.
How did you cut the antenna? I mean , what tool did you use to cut? So sorry i am so dense in the head.
Just with a Dremel tool with a cutting disk.
Just picked up a rough looking RF-2200 for $50.00 (WOW). The antenna was broken off just like yours. It was also missing the band switch knob. That I was lucky enough to find on eBay.
I ordered the antennas from Amazon and followed your instructions. It worked beautifully. I had to cut about and extra 1/4 inch off the original tube because of a kink. The new part wouldn’t slide through. Still works great just like the original.
Thanks for this great site. All the best, Bob R KB9BOJ
Hi John,
This was a very good instruction. I followed your’s step by step. Everything fine except when I finished I realized it does not want to bend. I do not no why? Yours can turn angle?
Thanks.
Steve
Thank you for this post! Thanks to this post, I was able to repair an antenna on an old Soviet / Latvian VEF 202 radio.