On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:35:15 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >I'm seriously thinking about buying as 5-band Hustler to ground mount behind >my shack. I've been told that my signal to noise ratio would improve >considerab
Congratulations on your upgrade and getting on the air. I seriously doubt that a vertical antenna would help your noise situation -- in general, noise tends to be vertically polarized, and a vertical would make matters worse. The salesman is not giving you good advice, either because of ignorance or because he wants to sell you an antenna. I live in the middle of Chicago, and have problems with noise too, but maybe not as bad as yours. I have several antennas here, and find that some pick up less noise than others. Three are horizontal, two are vertical. The location of these antennas and how close they happen to be to the noise sources has a lot to do with how much noise they pick up. You didn't say what bands you are trying to operate. If you can do it, I would try to put up a horizontal half-wave dipole for the band(s) you want to work. Multi-band trap dipoles work fine, and the traps allow them to be shorter than full-size half- wave dipoles. The HyPower Antenna company makes very nice loading coil traps and will sell you the traps only or complete antennas. I've built two antennas using their loading coil traps. Do a google search to find them. Barry is very good to deal with. If your space is limited, I would concentrate on bands that allow you to use shorter antennas. 20 m and 30 m are excellent bands for QRP and the antennas don't have to be very long to be reasonably effective. At my qth, I also find that the bands get less noisy as I go higher in frequency. Another idea for you. If you have one of those VHF talkies that lets you listen to the HF bands, try taking it around your home and surrounding area to listen for the noise you hear on your main HF rig. This may give you some ideas about where an antenna will pick up less noise, and it can also tell you which of your home electronics gear may be generating that noise! Computers, digital equipment, TV's, etc. are notorious for generating RF noise. 73, Jim K9YC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
