I know, TRY IT!
But maybe some ideas are just not worth trying.
A friend is restricted in his condo, but he has the end unit in a long, narrow, 3-story building (all 3 floors and the entire end is his unit).
Because he would have wife issues, he is not likely to be able to run any interior feedlines to where he is allowed to have is rig, BUT he notices that he has some RG-6 running to the roof and plans to use it! This is actually a twin cable that is exclusive for his unit that was put there for a potential sat dish, which he does have in place at the chimney, but only uses one of the feeds, which are ~ 50 feet long.
He is concerned about not having an RF ground.
Up at the roof where the RG-6 ends, he plans to connect a 1/2 wavelength wire for 80 meters and streatch that along the chimneys along the entire length of the building. The chimneys are located along the wall, but go above peak a few feet (8 feet above roof at the eve). He will use an approximate 0.05 wave length counterpoise connected to the feedline shield. All just straight connections to the F-connector, and probably 16-22 guage wire. Nobody will see that, right?
Will the RG-6 just be part of the antenna or will it act as an actual feed line? It goes into the wall and his building is stucco with that chicken wire faraday cage thing going on...
Can he use the counterpoise as one half of a 10-meter dipole and just add a second wire to the center feed to the other half?
Is there another length of wire he could add to the center feed to help on other bands?
Should he try any matching at the antenna connection or just rely on his tuner in the "shack"?
He is using an IC-718 and one of the economy MFJ manual tuners that does not have a balun, just coax connectors, that he has a F to UHF adapter to use. (btw, should he still tune for lowest SWR since he is using RG-6?)
Any other thoughts?
But maybe some ideas are just not worth trying.
A friend is restricted in his condo, but he has the end unit in a long, narrow, 3-story building (all 3 floors and the entire end is his unit).
Because he would have wife issues, he is not likely to be able to run any interior feedlines to where he is allowed to have is rig, BUT he notices that he has some RG-6 running to the roof and plans to use it! This is actually a twin cable that is exclusive for his unit that was put there for a potential sat dish, which he does have in place at the chimney, but only uses one of the feeds, which are ~ 50 feet long.
He is concerned about not having an RF ground.
Up at the roof where the RG-6 ends, he plans to connect a 1/2 wavelength wire for 80 meters and streatch that along the chimneys along the entire length of the building. The chimneys are located along the wall, but go above peak a few feet (8 feet above roof at the eve). He will use an approximate 0.05 wave length counterpoise connected to the feedline shield. All just straight connections to the F-connector, and probably 16-22 guage wire. Nobody will see that, right?
Will the RG-6 just be part of the antenna or will it act as an actual feed line? It goes into the wall and his building is stucco with that chicken wire faraday cage thing going on...
Can he use the counterpoise as one half of a 10-meter dipole and just add a second wire to the center feed to the other half?
Is there another length of wire he could add to the center feed to help on other bands?
Should he try any matching at the antenna connection or just rely on his tuner in the "shack"?
He is using an IC-718 and one of the economy MFJ manual tuners that does not have a balun, just coax connectors, that he has a F to UHF adapter to use. (btw, should he still tune for lowest SWR since he is using RG-6?)
Any other thoughts?