Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Giuseppe Morlè, who writes:

Dear Thomas,

I’m Giuseppe Morlè from Formia, in central Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea.

This is a creation of mine from 2013, made entirely from recycled materials—it’s a manual antenna tuner for my QRP gear.

Today, I pulled it off the shelf and used it as an antenna itself.

I’ve dubbed it the “scarrafone” (cockroach) antenna.

In the Neapolitan dialect, “scarrafone” means cockroach; since it bears a resemblance to one, that’s the name I gave it.

Even I was surprised by how well it performs as an antenna.

It features a coil made of aluminum wire, equipped with an alligator clip used to find the optimal tuning point.

There’s a 1000 pF variable capacitor, and on the side, an additional banana jack where I can plug in a random-wire antenna to boost the received signal.

The “scarrafone” works very well—even without the random wire—across all HF bands; you just need to find the right tuning point.

On the lower bands, the entire coil is used, adjusted via the variable capacitor.

You can see it in action on my YouTube channel:

The only expense I incurred was 5 euros for the capacitor; everything else is recycled material.

The “scarrafone” works great with portable radios, such as those from Tecsun and others.

I hope this might be of interest to all of you.

Best regards to you and all the friends at SWLingPost.

73, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW)