I recently bought an FM antenna for a receiver like this.
I've flattened it out a good bit on my windowsill but it's far from straight and is fairly wavy/curled from being bundled like this for who knows how long after manufacturing.
How does this still work as an antenna? I was under the impression antennas were (when practical) designed to be straight and some nice fraction of a wavelength.
Best Answer
I think this could be compared to meandered dipole antenna, a technique commonly found in UHF RFID tag antennas. But here is one article for research of VHF dipole antenna. So, if you keep the length l (dipole length) the same and add meanders, the frequency goes down because the electrical length of the antenna is longer:
In your situation the dipole length is reduced, but the electrical length of the dipole is the same:
Even though the "meanders" are a bit different, I suspect it could be working quite close to the intended frequency.