Fred, N3CSY, asked: "what type of ATTIC ANTENNAS are good, for us living in restricted communities (no antennas) - with attics?"
------------------ I have and excellent results with doublets. That's a center fed wire as long as I had room for in the attic. In an apartment that was at least 33 feet, perhaps a little more, by making it slightly "Z" shaped. It doesn't hurt to bend the ends a bit; just try to keep the angles of the bends as large as you have room for. I strung them "inverted V" style from the rafters with the center up at the peak as much as possible. No RF ground is needed and the antenna is quite efficient. They were fed with invisible open wire line. I made it out of whatever wire was handy for the part in the attic and the visible part was white wire-wrap wire sold by RS and others. It's quite small, about #30. That's not ideal for a feeder but then again my feed line was rather short, especially the part inside the apartment. I tried to arrange the operating desk next to a wall as nearly as possible under the center of the antenna. Directly above the operating position, I used an ice pick to put two small holes in the ceiling right where it joins the wall. The resulting holes are no larger than those produced by hanging a picture. The holes were about 2 inches apart. I used a miniature homebrew ATU that hung on the wall at a convenient height. I positioned the holes to be directly above it. Most apartment walls are white or nearly so the white wire wrap wire is invisible against the wall. I ran two lengths, one for each side of the feeder, up the wall and through the tiny holes into the attic. One or two staples held the wires tightly against the wall. Thumbtacks that match the wall work FB too. Drywall is a good insulator. Up in the attic I ran the two feed wires to the center of the antenna. Bits of plastic cut from film cans, old plastic coat hangars or whatever is handy made up the spacers. It is NOT necessary to have the wires running exactly parallel. Just make sure they don't touch and are sort of parallel to the center of the antenna. I had visitors come to the "shack" and look all around for the feeders from two feet away without seeing them until I pointed them out. A better choice for the feeder wire might be white hookup wire (if you have white walls), #20 or #22. If your walls are a different color, consider a little touchup paint matching the walls to dip the wire in to color it before installing the feeder. Touch the heads of a couple of thumbtacks with the same paint to hold the wires securely against the wall. Two at the top and two at the bottom are usually plenty. I never had an apartment higher than two floors, but I worked a LOT of DX running 5 to 15 watts on HF CW, mostly 40, 30, and 20 meters. Made a lot of contacts running 2 watts with an HW-8 as well. At 33 feet long, the antenna was "full sized" for 40 meters. On 80 it was only slightly less efficient than a full half wave. On the higher bands it was really FB. The biggest problems on 80 for me were, 1) Noise from the electrical systems in the apartments including things like touch-lamps and cheap dimmers. Most apartments have the power lines running around the ceilings (grrrrrr) and 2) Since my highest apartment was on the second level, the antenna was no more than 30 feet above the ground. That's very low for an 80 meter antenna. But on the higher bands it worked great. You can build that antenna for perhaps $10 if you buy the wire and regular antenna insulators new. If you get creative about what to use for insulators the only cost is the wire and a little time. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ 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
