{"id":67484,"date":"2026-10-26T06:55:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=67484"},"modified":"2026-10-26T06:55:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:55:51","slug":"the-e5-scarrafone-giuseppes-clever-recycled-antenna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/the-e5-scarrafone-giuseppes-clever-recycled-antenna\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u20ac5 Scarrafone: Giuseppe&#8217;s Clever Recycled Antenna"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-67485\" src=\"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1400\" height=\"769\" srcset=\"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1.jpeg 1400w, https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1-300x165.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1-1024x562.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1-768x422.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Giuseppe-1-624x343.jpeg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1400px) 100vw, 1400px\" \/><\/a>Many thanks to <em>SWLing Post<\/em> contributor Giuseppe Morl\u00e8, who writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Dear Thomas,<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I\u2019m Giuseppe Morl\u00e8 from Formia, in central Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">This is a creation of mine from 2013, made entirely from recycled materials\u2014it\u2019s a manual antenna tuner for my QRP gear.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Today, I pulled it off the shelf and used it as an antenna itself.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I\u2019ve dubbed it the \u201cscarrafone\u201d (cockroach) antenna.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">In the Neapolitan dialect, \u201cscarrafone\u201d means cockroach; since it bears a resemblance to one, that\u2019s the name I gave it.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Even I was surprised by how well it performs as an antenna.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">It features a coil made of aluminum wire, equipped with an alligator clip used to find the optimal tuning point.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The \u201cscarrafone\u201d works very well\u2014even without the random wire\u2014across all HF bands; you just need to find the right tuning point.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">On the lower bands, the entire coil is used, adjusted via the variable capacitor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">You can see it in action <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/KqwkPqS_apk?si=EmTyXG6qlLP8GBeJ\">on my YouTube channel<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KqwkPqS_apk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The only expense I incurred was 5 euros for the capacitor; everything else is recycled material.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">The \u201cscarrafone\u201d works great with portable radios, such as those from Tecsun and others.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">I hope this might be of interest to all of you.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Best regards to you and all the friends at SWLingPost.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">73, Giuseppe Morl\u00e8 (IZ0GZW)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Giuseppe Morl\u00e8, who writes: Dear Thomas, I\u2019m Giuseppe Morl\u00e8 from Formia, in central Italy, on the Tyrrhenian Sea. This is a creation of mine from 2013, made entirely from recycled materials\u2014it\u2019s a manual antenna tuner for my QRP gear. Today, I pulled it off the shelf and used it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3607,3194,3,43],"tags":[5791,8498,11201],"class_list":["post-67484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antennas","category-guest-posts","category-news","category-shortwave-radio","tag-giuseppe-morle-iz0gzw","tag-homebrew-antennas","tag-scarrafone"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pn3uc-hys","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67486,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67484\/revisions\/67486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}