Larry originally asked about attic antennas and a concrete tile roof.
I have both. I am in Lot 1 next to the gate, and blackmailed my HOA into outdoor HF antennas. I have a Cushcraft R7000 up, which is a half wave trapped antenna, but no radials. Works great. But I also have antennas in my attic. And they get used. A lot. My dipole for 20m has been used a lot and works well. My roof peak is about 22 feet and I have 14 foot ceilings. The main part of the house is about 42x46 feet, so I have a straight shot of about 45 feet in my attic where I can run the wire about 21 feet above the concrete slab. The 20m dipole has been replaced by a dipole with an SGC SG-239 coupler at the feed point. All bands and no SWR on feedline. Works quite well. No problem working Europe on 100 watts. Worked a bit od DX with the K2 barefoot too. The other HF antenna in the attic is a TFD, or terminated folded dipole. This is 45 feet long and homebrewed. I got 2 watt carbon film resistors from eBay, and a 16/1 QRP balun. I used the information from the Cebik site. Basically a squashed terminated loop. Excellent receiving antenna. I do a lot of SW broadcast listening, so this antenna is used for my Palstar R30. My attic antennas work fine. After Hurricane Frances and especially Wilma which passed right over my house, I didn't have any trouble checking into the SATERN net to pass H&W. During Wilma I even I even checked in to the Hurricane Watch Net and passed on my reading of 28.00 inches of mercury from my barometer to the NHC. This was while the eye of Wilma was over the house. So attic antennas work. Just (as a lot of the fellows have pointed out) put up a doublet with as much wire as high as you can. And if you can afford to put one of those automatic couplers at the feedpoint(no SWR on the feedline). My 2 cents, but from practical experience and 30 years of ham radio. 73 all de Bob K3YT _______________________________________________ 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
