If the poorly designed lamp goes bad, all it not lost my friend. Unplug the lamp first. The lampshade has plastic material that will easily peel off if you try. Try using a pair of hand pruners and maybe a pair of needle-nosed pliars. You’ll find some wire in there. Believe it or not, you have a police scanner antenna in your hands! The lampshade will serve as an antenna.

Some lampshades have an almost perfect discone shape, while others have a loop shape. Either will work fine. So you lost a cheap lamp because of a cheap switch, but now you have a scanner antenna that works fabulous. Discone or loop, we’ll take it as we get it.

This isn’t all of the good news though. The lamp that went bad will have a cord that plugged into the electric socket. Again, make sure the cord is unplugged from the socket. Then, cut that cord from the the lamp.

You now have another police scanner antenna. All you need is an adapter; more precisely the RCA Matching Transformer. Another option: 75 to 300 Ohm UHF/VHF Matching Transformer.

So there you have it. One bad lamp makes two scanner antennas.

I now need a new lamp. Oh well.