Car antennas?

I always make my own.Streched sprue works but I usually use a guitar string cut to length.

If I need a C.B. antenna like on a truck I use N scale model railroad coupler springs on the base and mount the guitar string to that. Looks great and "bounces" around like the real thing.

What about telescoping antennas? I have no reference to scale down. Is there a generic antenna diameter used on, say, VWs?

Depending on the year ( my 96 Dodge pick-up is a one piece antenna) the teliscopic antennas were usually 30 inches tall when fully extended. They came in three sections 10 inches long each and had a "button on the end ( a great place to put a Union of 76 ball ) I dont know actual diameter of them so I cant help you there and I doubt you could get three different sizes of tubing to look right at that scale but you could use one size and "scribe " a line between the sections to acheve the telescoping effect.

Hello!

Such antennae vary in size, but basically they are about 6 mm in diameter at the base, about 1 meter long, have about five sections and the top one is about 2 mm in diameter. There's a knob at the top of the same diameter the lowest section is, about 8 mm high. Such antennae were used until the nineties, later everybody switched to antennae built as printed circuits on the rear window (doubling up as window heating).

Hope it helps, have a nice day

Paweł

A person could, one supposes, use telescoping hypodermic needles as provided by various vendors.

Only tough part is that the steps are, as Pawel sussinctly points out about 0.5mm; which is 0.02mm (circa 0.0008")which might be hard to source out.

Craft store bead would probably do for the ball on the tip.

The antenna on my current ride--a 2011 Escape--is tapered black steel 1m long with a teeny-tiny wire spiraling up its length

There were some vehicles, there in the 2000s, that had a tapered vinyl cover ofer the metal core antenna--those would be a distinct pain to model since they were a tapered oval.  So, finding an oval bit of sprue to stretch would be the problem.

The old spiral "pigtail" cell antennae from the 80s & 90s would be a distinct pain.

As I remember those balls, they were about 1/4 inch.  That would be about 10 mil in 1:24 or 1:25.  I don't believe any beads are that small. In fact, even finding ten mil wire is hard.  The upper part of those telescoping antennas, as I remember, were about 3/32 inch, which would make the wire for that last section about 3 mil- pretty small and wimpy wire.

You can find electrical wire (copper) in that kind of size, but it is not stiff- it sags pretty easily.  Anyone know how fine stainless wire is readily available?