avoiding antenna blind spots

[mrsvensven]

I built a half wave dipole by hanging up a piece of wire and connecting it to the feed line in the middle. How far away from metal objects and wires should the antenna be to avoid blind spots?

I built the antenna for VHF-lo band, so it is pretty long and mounting options are limited. I've seen sources that say the antenna should be 1 wavelength away, but that is a significant distance on low frequencies. Are there any tricks that anyone knows of, besides putting the antenna up on the roof, above everything?

Thanks for the help

 

[kb2vxa]

Ideally an antenna should be free and clear of all surrounding objects. Since the ideal is difficult to achieve in practice we do the best we can. Just use your noodle and mount it in a way that makes sense.

 

[mrsvensven]

Ideally an antenna should be free and clear of all surrounding objects. Since the ideal is difficult to achieve in practice we do the best we can. Just use your noodle and mount it in a way that makes sense.

Thanks for the input. I decided to put it on the corner of my house, which unfortunatly is only a few feet from my shack. I havn't had much of a chance to test it yet, but it sounds like I can at least receive the bases on the frequencies I monitor.

This looks like a great project, but with the price of copper I decided a scrap piece of wire on the side of my house would be better than that thing on top of it.