[Elecraft] Recieve antennas in an Urban area

[Larry Phipps]

I designed a nifty minibeam about 5-6 years ago. It uses active 
circuitry on receive, and a rather complicated set of element tuners for 
transmit (with relays and stepper motor). I created a PC interface to 
drive the transmit circuitry from software, and prototyped a standalone 
PIC controller, but have been too busy filling kit orders for my other 
projects to finish it. I use an OCF dipole for transmit most of the time 
now, and the active minibeam for receive. It's quite small, covers 
80-10m in receive, and has instant front/back switching.

I submitted the project to QST/QEX, but they don't think there's enough 
interest without the transmit controller. I also had a couple commercial 
antenna manufacturers seriously interested, but nothing has come of it 
yet. Look for details on my website, www.telepostinc.com under the 
"E-Beam" link.

73,
Larry N8LP



Vic K2VCO wrote:
> Richard Thorne wrote:
>
>> So what is the group using for receive antenna's?
>
> There are all kinds of specialized receiving antennas such as loops, 
> ferrite loops, and even Beverages (but they don't fit in urban 
> locations!)
>
> My experience has been that the most important thing is to use a 
> balanced horizontal antenna.  Of course it should be as high and away 
> from noise sources as possible. It should use a balun or be fed with 
> balanced line in order to reduce noise pickup on the feedline which 
> passes close to various noise sources.
>
> You can buy or make a *balanced* active antenna which is much smaller 
> than a full-sized dipole. Many active antennas are unbalanced, which 
> is not desirable.