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Base dipole in attic for SWL 10-80M

357

Walkin' the dog
Sep 12, 2009
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Chilliwack, BC
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Just wondering if the antenna guru's have any advice to mount a dipole in my attic.
I want to listen to 80m, MW 40m and maybe transmit in an emergency.

If I string it in a v like in this picture, which way would it pick up from?

2020148.jpg

or if I did this?
2020149.jpg

or if I end fed it like this starting from either end?

do I need a 1:1 Current Balun?
 

How much metal do you have in the attic? Air conditioning ducts,
water pipes, electrical wiring, foil-faced insulation batts and so forth.

Most efficient way to see if an antenna will work in a particular case is to build it, install it, and test it. Before testing, though, you need your license. You can listen all you want.

I wouldn't think either of those would work very well. The angle is way too small and you'll likely have signal cancellation that'll make for poor results. Is that YOUR shed in back there? And how far can you go to the top right of the picture?
 
theres very little up there the house is 100+ years old.
mostly I'm wondering what would work best for listening.
Its gotta be inside, I got 40 feet from one side to the other.
I guess I'll just figure it out
 
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357, I encourage you to test your ideas in spite of the nay-Sayers.

I've spent years around my radio mentor and his trove of Ham buddies. I saw plenty of disagreement and sometime physical fights over nothing.

I'm not saying to ignore Mike's comments...give them due consideration and carry on with your work.

This world is full of chaos and bitterness, no love :love:, much lacking of the Holy Spirit in lots of folks, and at this time it ain't likely to improve soon.
 
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At one point I was stuck using an attic antenna for HF. I tried to string the wire every which way from dipoles to end feds with a decent ground. I got my best results when I ran a closed loop of wire all the way around the perimeter of the attic.

In another location, I loaded up the highest metal gutter on the roof through a tuner. It had both vertical and horizontal component and the basement cold water pipe provided a ground that the tuner liked.
 
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When I was SWLing in the 1950s, before I got my Novice license, I had a very nice Hallicrafters SX-99 receiver. For an antenna I used a piece of bell wire that ran from the farthest corner of my shack/bedroom, kittycorner to the corner above my desk, and from there to the antenna terminal of the receiver.

With that, inside of a stucco frame house, I heard EVERYthing! Radio Moscow, Radio Australia, Japan, Ecuador, you name it! I never knew that a stucco-encased room was supposed to be a Faraday Cage (i.e. RF-tight). If I'd known that it probably wouldn't have worked, but I used that piece of wire, maybe 25 feet long at most, even after I got my license and put up a 40 meter dipole outside, which I used on 15 meters also. Still kept the indoor wire for the receiver since I didn't have a coax switch at the time.

Worked lots of Novice-band DX. Didn't have an SWR meter but so what? The antennas did what they were supposed to do.
 
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Eddie’s comments deserve repeating. So here they are. (y)


357, I encourage you to test your ideas in spite of the nay-Sayers.

I've spent years around my radio mentor and his trove of Ham buddies. I saw plenty of disagreement and sometime physical fights over nothing.

I'm not saying to ignore Mike's comments...give them due consideration and carry on with your work.

This world is full of chaos and bitterness, no love :love:, much lacking of the Holy Spirit in lots of folks, and at this time it ain't likely to improve soon.
 

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