HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Equipment => Topic started by: ChrisSmolinski on April 06, 2012, 1305 UTC
-
What do you use as your primary antenna? I thought it would be interesting to see what folks are using. And it might be useful information for operators, to know what their listeners are using.
Reply to the thread if you need another type of antenna added to the list
-
I picked "small loop" because it was the closest thing to the loop I actually use. It's a full-wave 40 meter vertical rectangular loop. Dimensions are 12 ft vertical and 58 ft horizontal. It's about 4 feet off the ground. None of the choices actually fit.
If you add a category for it, I'll modify my vote.
-
I picked "small loop" because it was the closest thing to the loop I actually use. It's a full-wave 40 meter vertical rectangular loop. Dimensions are 12 ft vertical and 58 ft horizontal. It's about 4 feet off the ground. None of the choices actually fit.
If you add a category for it, I'll modify my vote.
Good suggestion! I added full wave loop.
-
Phased BOGs
-
Phased BOGs
I added BOG and phased BOG.
I keep meaning to try a BOG or a phased BOG, I hear good things about them.
-
My HF Antennas:
WELLBROOK-ALA1530 ACTIVE LOOP
WELLBROOK-ALA1530AL-1 ACTIVE LOOP
WELLBROOK-ALA1530L ACTIVE LOOP
WELLBROOK-ALA330S ACTIVE LOOP
Regards Lino..
-
100' inverted L (random wire) is the usual unless I'm going low (AM broadcast or below) then an LF Engineering L-400B
-
For the past couplafew years I've mostly been using homebrewed fugly loops made from ordinary cable TV coax. Fugloop 1 was a little better suited to HF and medium wave skywave, but not quite as directional as I wanted for MW and to null out local noise. It was best as a passive antenna and seemed to overload my cheapie old Radio Shack antenna amplifier. It was cheap and easy to make, but not as portable as I wanted.
Fugloop 2 is more directional for MW and nulling out local RFI, okay but not great for HF and, if possible, even fuglier. It's mostly just a single long hank of TV coax coiled up jussst so, without a tuning cap. I just fiddled with the coil diameters until it worked and was directional on MW. It shouldn't work and if I try to describe it, sounds crazy. I'll hafta photograph and sketch it. My main goal was to make it cheap, easy to rig up and easy to tote outdoors and hang from a tree or toss on the ground. Be interesting to see if anyone else can make it work or improve on it without making it more expensive, more complex or needing a tuning cap.
-
I might betray my cover but actually I don't give a krap! My bestes so far antenna for my current qth for pirate catches is a wire attached to the baseboard heater. Don't kid yourselves, Propagation rules! & don't ask me why it works, either. Also it seems to pick up the least amount of local qrm, including rf & computer noise.
-
That doesn't surprise me at all, Nella. Occasionally I've had the best reception and least RFI when I hook my compromise ground wire to the hi-z antenna input. Ya do what ya gotta do for this silly hobby.
-
That doesn't surprise me at all, Nella. Occasionally I've had the best reception and least RFI when I hook my compromise ground wire to the hi-z antenna input. Ya do what ya gotta do for this silly hobby.
Thanks. But I gotta ask in all seriousness (showing my lack of expertise for the jargon in this hobbie), what do you mean by "hi-z" antenna input?
-
Hi-Z = high impedance, Lo-Z = low impedance.
Most tabletop receivers and many portables have high and low impedance antenna inputs. The low impedance is usually around 50-75 Ohms and is normally fed with some sort of shielded cable or coax to your full wavelength sky loop on the back 40 acres of your gentleman's ranch. Hi-Z is usually around 300-500 Ohms and is normally fed with a wire hanger or that six foot long piece of extension cord we found in the dumpster outside our trailers. In radio jargon, Hi-Z also translates to "I'm broke."
Why "Z"? Radio people are notoriously lazy sots famously industrious citizens whose use of jargon is even more annoying sophisticated than high school kids quoting memes in real life. I've actually heard hams saying "Hi-Hi" on the radio. That's even sadder hipper than the Sad Bachelor's mating call, "Git in the kitchen."
Take me. I can't even be bothered to write UTC half the time. So I fall back on the military "z" for zulu. So when I write "Wow, smokin' signal from WBNY at 1030z!" do I mean 1,030 Ohms? Probably, because there's no way I'd be up DXing at 5:30 am.
what do you mean by "hi-z" antenna input?
-
Random longwire aerial, 30 metres long
-
WELLBROOK-ALA1530L ACTIVE LOOP ;D
-
Forgot about this topic. Switched my vote to small loop.
Peace!
-
Phased BOGs
I added BOG and phased BOG.
I keep meaning to try a BOG or a phased BOG, I hear good things about them.
You'll like them Chris. They can turn a summer night of static into a quiet listening environment. The only caveat with the BOG is the they're height sensitive. If you've got tall grass,over 6-8 inches high,the noise will increase quite a bit if you run it on top of the grass. Try to keep the thing on the ground or very close to it.
I sometimes use a random wire tuner with one,but it's not really necessary. It helps peak up weak signals in the 90 and 120 meter bands.
If anyone knows of a simple to build,random wire tuner for the MW band,I'd be very interested in hearing about it. A tunable BOG for MW could have a lot of dx potential.
-
Sky loop about 400' long and i love it great signals and low noise best ive tried so far
-
For SW, I use an indoor random wire. I had an outdoor 100 ft. wire but it blew down a few years ago, and the tree had to be removed soon afterwards. I recently strung a low 150 ft. wire, but right now that's still an experiment.
For MW, I use a Radio Shack loop, a Select-A-Tenna, and a 2 ft. homemade spiral loop (with a 4 ft. spiral loop in storage).
-
I use an 80m doublet (130') suspended from a live oak. I feed it with 450ohm ladder line to a 4:1 4kw balun right outside the shack. A short rg8 jumper is my feed through to the tuner and radio. A buddy and I built a t2fd today - a side by side test will be forthcoming.
-
Been using a G5RV for many years, but as of late it seems to be picking up a ton of RFI. Not sure if something has gone wrong with it or neighbors with noisy electronics.
Also have a 100' random wire for another receiver while I'm not hanging out near the coax for G5RV. That seems to work well enough, since it runs from the back porch to the back yard.
Thinking about the Wellbrook, but a bit expensive. Recently read about the PA0RDT "mini-whip." Ordered some parts to make one and going to give it a try and see how well it works. Reports are favorable. If it does work as well as people say, then will make a bunch of these for the various receivers, and even one for the car (have a Sony AM/FM/SW receiver in there).
-
Not sure where my Ewe fits in on this list Chris.
Z
-
+1
Mine is about 275ft long, tuned to be resonant on the 80 meter ham bands. Works great, lasts long time.
Steve
Sky loop about 400' long and i love it great signals and low noise best ive tried so far
-
My primary SWL antenna is a random wire about 150 feet long or so fed through a 9:1 balun. It's in kind of an inverted-U fashion. The weatherproof box holding the balun is about 15 ft. up the side of the garage just under the eave, and from there one side of the balun transformer goes straight down to ground, and the other goes up about 10-15 feet near the top of a tree, then over about 100 feet to another tree, fed through a pulley and down about 20-25 feet with a window weight providing ballast.
For years I used a 5 band ham trap vertical which worked well until we moved, when the spot I chose for it on the north side of the house where the big power lines run caused quite a bit of noise to overpower all but the strongest signals on the bands. I took the vertical down when I put the random wire up. I've been thinking about putting the vertical back up next to the garage and building a switch box to choose between the wire, the vertical, or both. Still not sure if I'm going to do that or not, but I still have the vertical laying idle behind the garage.
For our covered patio, I have a 50' end fed antenna for general SWL/QRP ham use.
-
OK this weekend I put the vertical back up and built the switchbox. Details in the thread I started about it.
-
Off center fed Dipole (Windom) is my main SWL. It is 173' in length and up around 50'. I had to cut in half for my new location. It was double that. <Cry> :'(
Some years back when I had more room I used a pair of Bobtail Curtains. INCREDIBLE USE OF WIRE!!
-
Interesting that you put T2FD as a choice. I had a T2FD up for years--it's a great aerial. When I built it I was young and stupid, and built it to withstand The Inquisition (or whatever)--12 ga. solid copper wire, PVC spreaders, etc. etc.
Were I to build another one, it would be much lighter. It's a nice, quiet, broadband aerial, and worked well with my R390/A. Ah, those were the days, decoding TASS RTTY in EE out of Cuba. . .
For now, it's the 40m dipole outside at 50' and a 20m magnetic loop in the attic. . .
-
DX Engineering 8 circle array
-
Par end fedz oriented east-west
Short long wire oriented north-south
-
for the bc bands i use an old frizel fd-4 off center fed
for ham tet emtron te 56 5 element 6 bands
-
I use a 9" loop for MW and a long wire for SW. I am restricted to keeping an antenna indoors (HOA) and looking to build a "Carpet Loop Antenna" for better SW. If anyone has feedback or has built one please share. Thanks
-
I'm using what I guess would be a delta loop 30 feet out from bedroom window to a tree. about 50 feet from the tree to another tree. this leg has a coil of about 35 loops of 14g wire around a piece of pvc in it. the third leg goes about 40 feet from the 2'nd tree back to the house. it is fed into a random wire tuner.
Sometimes I use an MFJ 1026 noise canceling unit as an active antenna. I'm too lazy to get out and put up proper noise antenna for the '1026. it works pretty well as an active antenna with just the built in whip.
-
Depending on what band I'm on, I use a Kaito active loop antenna. It works quite well for MW and SW DXing, but my little DX-398 has such a tendency to overload that I pull the antenna and just use the built-in whip if I'm going anywhere near LW.
One of these years (and this is true, not just idle daydreaming) I'm going to move to a bigger place, and then there will be a balcony-mounted antenna, landlord permitting. If the mount is light enough to clamp or be magnetized to the rail/floor, I can't see a landlord objecting too strenuously. Now I'm pondering antennae to use in that situation. Hmm.
-
Depending on what band I'm on, I use a Kaito active loop antenna. It works quite well for MW and SW DXing, but my little DX-398 has such a tendency to overload that I pull the antenna and just use the built-in whip if I'm going anywhere near LW.
One of these years (and this is true, not just idle daydreaming) I'm going to move to a bigger place, and then there will be a balcony-mounted antenna, landlord permitting. If the mount is light enough to clamp or be magnetized to the rail/floor, I can't see a landlord objecting too strenuously. Now I'm pondering antennae to use in that situation. Hmm.
GOOGLE: LF Engineering and look up their H-800 and H-900 models. Price is OK. $149.00 new. There may be some used offered in the secondary market. One reviewer remarked it equaled a 50' outside dipole.
-
Wow, thanks! I hadn't a clue, and that sounds a) reasonably priced compared to some and b) impressive! :)
-
I initially went ot eBay and saw some SWL antennas but they seemed to of a "homebrew" flavor. I never saw a review though. MFJ makes a HF antenna for balconies, etc. Again, I never saw a review. Good luck! ...Steve
-
Active Pixel loop, multiband dipole and longwire (which never gets used).