Antenna Wire

My lovely wife has a Losi Micro-T that she enjoys tearing around the house with. However, our cat decided that the antenna wire needed to be chewed off. I'm pretty confident that I can open up the esc/receiver case and solder a new wire onto the PCB, but I've never had to do a receiver wire before. Is it any kind of special wire? Or can I just throw in any kind of stranded wire as long as it's the correct length?

Is it AM or 2.4?  If it's AM than any wire will suffice and length is not the issue.  If it's 2.4 you first need to see if it's coax, if it isn't then again any length of any wire will work.  If it's coax then it should not be soldered if it has a micro RG connector inside the box.  Hope this helps.

The length of an antenna always matters, regardless what frequency it is on.  That said, an antenna of the incorrect length may work well enough in a particular application.  That would be an application where operational distance is not a big issue (like inside your house).  I'd be very surprised if your Losi has an antenna that uses coax.  Coax is generally only used where there is a need to get the antenna outside of a metal or carbon chassis or airframe.  When coax is used, the end of it will have a non-coax length of wire at the end that is actually the antenna.  The length of a 2.4GHz antenna is much more critical than the length of any other band used for R/C.  This is simply because the frequency is higher.  Normally an antenna is cut precisely to 1/4 of a wavelength.  This is why as the frequency goes up, the antenna gets shorter and shorter.  Obviously any error in cut length becomes more significant at higher frequencies because it's a larger percentage of the overall length.  Case in point... An error of say 1/8" at 2.4GHz (antenna length about 1") it is very significant compared to say a 72MHz antenna that may have an antenna almost two feet long.

The good news is that antenna length errors on a receiver generally only impact distance of operation.  On the other hand, a non-resonant (wrong length) antenna can cause a transmitter to draw excessive current and let the smoke out.  As for what kind of wire to use, that is not super critical.  At 2.4GHz silver plated wire works best, but you probably won't have that so just shoot for something around the same diameter.  At lower frequencies the wire plating is less critical so you can use just about anything.  The performance of stranded vs solid wire makes little difference.  However, stranded is usually the best choice since it stands up to flexing and vibration better.  The diameter of the wire is not super critical either.  Smaller wire yields a narrower bandwidth and tends to make the length more critical.  In your case, since you may not even know how long it was to start with, just do your best to replicate what you think was there to start with.  If you have no idea, maybe you could measure a friends or look at one at the store.  If when you get the receiver open you find a connector on the antenna (not likely unless coax), post a good picture here so we can see what you have.

...Tiger

Oh well...  After my sermon, I put "Losi Micro-T" into Google (I'm not a car guy) to see what this thing looks like.  Turns out it's 27MHz (most forgiving) so you can use anything that even looks like it might be right.   

...Tiger

Thanks for the wealth of information. (Yeah, it is AM 27mhz, I should have been more specific.) I figured that since the model won't be more than 20 feet away from the transmitter at any one time it wouldn't make a huge deal anyway. I'll find some stranded wire (I might even have an old broken receiver somewhere...) and replicate the length as best as possible. I still have the piece of wire the kitty chewed up so I'll just "add" the two pieces together and solder in a new wire that's the same-ish length.

Thanks again, friends!

On a slightly-related note, I just thought I'd share something that completely blew me away. Losi/Horizon Hobby sells a 2.4Ghz "conversion" kit for this micro truck (it's 1/36-scale, super tiny). I checked it out, it retails $75. My wife spent almost that much on the entire truck ready-to-run! I realize this hobby is expensive, I've been doing it for 12+ years, but holy crap!

The receiver in question

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Remember though that's a full brushless conversion your buying, not just a radio upgrade.

And to tiger I didn't realize it mattered that much but I completely remember years ago everyone was lengthening the receiver antennas on our spektrum receivers and it helped drastically with range. Not sure how that equates with what your saying but it was before they went coax.

Now we have looked at the 'technical' aspects of DIY antenna replacement are we ready for something a little more 'surreal' !?!
... Would y'all like to know HOW to STOP Kitty from eating your antennas the next time?
... Something less radical as a 20,000v capacitance charge up Fluffy's whiskers but still taken from the pages of the CIA?

Yeah, thats true. I guess I didn't consider that, because the last thing my wife needs is a brushless micro truck inside the house. She hits enough furniture with it as is.