[Boatanchors] simple Rx antenna in an attic?

Jack Taylor jack at n7oo.com
Tue Jan 25 17:04:52 EST 2005


An end fed wire of whatever length you can muster should be adequate.  The
antenna tuner may help
with impedance matching and should be adjusted for loudest received signal.
If you make a dipole
antenna, this would tend to defeat your general purpose reception since
dipoles are resonate at
specific frequencies.

If people are going to be within close proximity, I'd suggest you NOT use
the antenna for transmitting
unless you intend to neuter them :-)

Jack

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eugene Hertz" <ehertz at tcaf.org>
To: <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 12:24 PM
Subject: [Boatanchors] simple Rx antenna in an attic?


Hello All,

I am putting a simple shack together (my first) in my new house. The snow on
the ground and the temperature outside (ny) is such that I will probably
wait till spring to put up a Tx antenna (plus I have to pass my test first
anyway!). In the meantime, I thought I would get my receivers running
(various hammarlunds and a harris rf-590H). And thought I might just run an
antenna strictly for Rx in my attic. My attic (which is a finished playroom)
has a crawl space the length of the house which is 55'. Figure I could make
an antenna 50' in length.

So here's my question. What would you do? Would you make a simple straight
wire antenna (is that called random wire)? Or would you run coax to the
center of the run (say 25') and then run the inner conductor 25' out and the
shield conductor 25' back in the same direction that the coax came from and
make a dipole? My interests are general coverage as well as ham bands.

I figure this should only be an rx antenna because my children play up in
the playroom. For the future, how far away from people should an antenna be
carrying, say 100W of power?

Last question. I purchased an antenna tuner (160M-10M for when I get my
transmitter on the air (CE 100V). I was wondering if this could be used to
help tune the Rx antenna? Since I can't use an SWR meter, what would be a
good approach to tuning? Simply move the dials for best reception?

I lied, here is my last question. So if you recommend a dipole, what kind of
coax? RG58, 58U? 59? 8? And also, if I were to use PL-259 connectors, do
people recommend "compression", solder, crimp? what? I went to radio shack
yesterday and was bewildered and confused about my options.

THANKS!!!!!
Eugene




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