Hi all,

Firstly I apologise for my ignorance, I am completely new to vintage radios and don't know much about them at all except for I like their sound and look so I finally bought one.

I have a 1951 Hotpoint M65ME which I bought as 'working.' It has two short (10cm) wires out the back of it, one red and one black. The black one I guessed was the antenna because it had a longer wire about 1.5 metres attached to it when bought, and I guessed the red was the earth. The radio's fairly deaf with everything except for 7NT, but works ok with a bit of fuzz when I hold the red wire. I've searched online but the websites I've found are not very beginner friendly.

Have I got the earth and antenna around the wrong way, do I need to do something with them, or is there something wrong with something else inside it?

Any help is appreciated,
Py

Sounds like the red wire should be antenna - when you hold it, your body is the antenna the radio is looking for.

As you seem to be in a strong signal area, there should be no need for an earth connection if you have 1.5 metres of antenna. If swapping the wires doesn't fix the situation, then further investigation may be needed and you may find yourself slowly becoming an expert.

Maven

As an experiment get a length of insulated wire, say a metre or two long and run this out a window away from any power points or other sources of interference (such as computers etc.)

Connect one end of this wire to the red wire for a start, there should be an increase in signal strength.

Generally the earth wire will be soldered to the chassis and is usually the black wire.

Thanks for the help!

I feel very silly but yes, the red is the antenna and black is earth! I swapped it over and can now get more channels especially lower frequencies I couldn't get anything on before. Sounds great...I love it.

Simplex: I'll have a go at putting a wire outside and see if that makes it clearer.