In the early 60's we had moved to the far north in central Canada for an 18 mos period when my Dad was Staff Seargent in the RCMP. While in Grade 2 at the time , we had no TV broadcasters except for 500 miles to south in Winnipeg,,but due to the transfer we had a TV. I figured out out to tuned the UHF TV to pickup the harmonic of the police radio with rabbit ears and on hot summer days,,I could pick up Texas TV from many ground to cloud skips.
THen 15 yrs later armed with my little EE degree and years of RF experience, when a bunch of guys were over to watch the Superbowl and cable TV stopped in the last quarter and being in the basement the tuned coat hanger was nyet quite enough, so I would touch the coat hanger with one finger and tune the position of one leg and arm to get enough signal to watch the game until cable signal was restored.
My first 1/2 wavelength antenna design circa '76, was on a Black Brandt sounding rocket which spun at a couple hundred RPM so 3/8" braid roll,pressed flat was tuned in the lab with stretched wax harness string to cut within 1mm , the length for the VHF channel with >20 dB return loss for good matching. Then it was coiled up in a spool and when the nose cone was ejected, the antenna would stretch out to provide the data telemetry signal from a few hundred miles up over Hudson Bay, with a perfect signal.