Possible outdoor antenna idea . . . folded long wire?

[KB2GOM]

An outdoor antenna is better than an indoor antenna. Thinking about my options, the one place that I could hang an antenna would be under the roof eaves on the west side of the house. But the eave on the west side of our small cottage is only about 30 feet long. That's a fairly short "long" wire.

So, how about a folded long wire. Use, say, speaker wire; solder the wire together at one end and fold it back over itself under the eave before running it through the window . . . possibly extending the length of the wire to roughly 120 feet.

It would be mechanically feasible, but would it make sense for improving reception of HF signals?

 

[popnokick]

Folding the same electrical length of insulated wire back over itself... with both strands in close proximity to each other... is going to result in the entire antenna acting mostly like a single strand of wire. IOTW, no advantage to having two closely-spaced elements next to each other. Where things start to happen is when you separate the wires from each other by fractional wavelength distances. And connect to only one (or possibly more) of the elements. You've now begun to build a beam (or curtain array, or other directional antenna), and it will have highly directional characteristics dependent upon the orientation of the parallel elements. To "predict" how long / how close the elements will be when this interaction begins... and to attempt to answer a myriad of "What if...." questions .... you need an antenna modeling program. Very popular is EZNEC. Similar and slightly simpler to learn is 4NEC2. Welcome to the DEEP world of antenna modeling. You would benefit from the ARRL Antenna Manual before you get too far into modeling. ALSO - there is a book... ARRL I think... on indoor antennas you can make yourself. It's been referenced here on RR in other threads.

 

[ka3jjz]

Check this out for a possibility....

How to Build a Simple Linear-Loaded Dipole for Low-Noise Shortwave Radio Listening

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and RX antenna guru, Grayhat, for another excellent guest post focusing on compact, low-profile urban antennas: A linear loaded dipole for the SWL by Grayhat …

swling.com

Mike

 

[KB2GOM]

Check this out for a possibility....

How to Build a Simple Linear-Loaded Dipole for Low-Noise Shortwave Radio Listening

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and RX antenna guru, Grayhat, for another excellent guest post focusing on compact, low-profile urban antennas: A linear loaded dipole for the SWL by Grayhat …

swling.com

Mike

That might be just the thing I need!