[Elecraft] Antennas in the attic

[Terry Schieler]

When I built my present (brick and frame) home in 1996 I was fortunate enough to work with my builder and architect and had them design the attic to be void of all HVAC ductwork, AC wiring, low voltage wiring (alarm and telephone) and stereo speaker leads.  The builder thought I was a kook (not entirely wrong).  The builder made me two "catwalks" out from the center of the attic to the far ends so I could get to dipole ends to adjust for resonance ($800 total).  

Today, in my attic, I have:

Alpha Delta-DX-EE (40-20-15-10)
Homebrew WARC fan dipole (30-17-12)
3-ele 6M yagi on rotator
Stacked AEA 6M halos
10M groundplane
2M Msquare "Eggbeater"
70 cm Msquare "Eggbeater"
5-ele 2M yagi (vertically)
2M/440 satellite AZ-EL array
2 DC to daylight "Discones"
Delta loop on and SGC-230 coupler
6M dipole
2M yagi - 2.3 GHz "BBQ Grill" AZ-EL sat antenna array

All compromise antennas, obviously, but they all work and each is "better than a sharp stick in the eye".

73 Terry, WØFM



-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Smith [mailto:jack.smith at cliftonlaboratories.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2013 4:19 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Antennas in the attic

In years past, part of my work involved signal propagation (VHF/UHF) predictions and measurements.

For 150 MHz paging service, the generally accepted in-building attenuation figure was on the order of 10 to 20 dB compared with an outdoor measurement in the same location. 10 dB or so for typical timber framed residential construction, 20 dB for reinforced concrete commercial or multi-unit residential construction, and 30 dB in some particularly difficult environments with many interior walls and with high local noise, such as a telephone company switching center.