41 countries in 5 hours with 100 watts into a rain gutter.
Transmitting gutter antenna.
A ham friend of mine recently asked me for the details of how i use my rain gutter and downspout as an antenna.
I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr.
I had great time.
500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice.
Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic.
Check out the element uni directional long range antenna.
I have a couple of questions for anyone with expertise or experience in using a rain gutter as an antenna.
Rain gutters are a compromise at best.
I noticed the rain gutters and downspouts of my house.
That article found its way into several ham radio publications and newsletters.
Having limited space for wire antennas elected to use one of the house rain gutters for low hf 40 80 160 the gutter is 67 long continuous aluminum.
Attached the feed line to a downspout and coax shield to grounding.
Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb.
Just refuses to work.
I originally did a write up on it in 1994.
The antenna from her dining room window my typical luck.
However i recommend cw for such installations.
This all aluminum gutter is fed with coax with an unterminated shield at this end shield connected to radio ground at the other to reduce nearby computer hash from inside the house.
Furthermore antenna tuners placed at the transmitter allow substantial losses in feed lines to be corrected in order to fool a transmitter into working correctly.
The losses are dissipated through heat or to ground.
Check the black markers on the map and if all of your desired stations are transmitting from the same area or within 20 of each other you can use a uni directional antenna.
The rain gutter is fairly new about 3 years old.
Using the terms rain gutter and efficiency are a contridiction.
Started to think about some alternative stealthy antenna designs.
This gutter antenna is connected via an upper roof level downspout where no personal contact is possible.
Aluminum and brand new so they probably made contact.
Most of the original article is still relevant but i have.
I ve always fed gutter antennas from the bottom of a downspout using a coax pigtail one end with an so 239 uhf connector same as what s on the back of most ham cb radios center of the coax going to the gutter and braid going to a nearby grounding point of some kind either a ground rod worst case scenario radials better or groundrod with radials best option.
Well not to put the nice radial system i had recently planted to waste i.
And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw.
Rain gutter antenna with sg 230.
Economics and efficiency are the main objectives.
