[Elecraft] More antenna problems

[Jim Brown]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004 09:35:15 EDT, Wingkeel at aol.com 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