Attic Installed Antennas

[dlwtrunked]

Antenna's can and do work OK in an attic.
If you have A/C Lines in attic that can be an issue - best to keep the wire/antenna as far away from them as you can.
That said they do not work quite as well as the same Antenna Outside.

The wires do not have to be "in attic" to cause a problem, the wiring in the rest of the house is close enough to be a potential problem. (The ceiling of the rest of the house below is not going to stop interference, in fact wiring there is going to just add to it. I think you knew all that and just slipped in your wording.

 

[W8WCA]

The wires do not have to be "in attic" to cause a problem, the wiring in the rest of the house is close enough to be a potential problem. (The ceiling of the rest of the house below is not going to stop interference, in fact wiring there is going to just add to it. I think you knew all that and just slipped in your wording.

This is all true - we have a bit of an advantage here no ceiling lights except a Bathroom.

 

[dlwtrunked]

This is all true - we have a bit of an advantage here no ceiling lights except a Bathroom.

Lucky. Even when no ceiling lights, some house are still wired via the attic to drop down to outlets.

 

[W8WCA]

Lucky. Even when no ceiling lights, some house are still wired via the attic to drop down to outlets.

Being a ranch with full basement not lots go up the walls

We had this place built (in 1991) and I pre wired attic antennas (an coming down the wall in my Radio Room before the house finished

 

[N9JIG]

Being a ranch with full basement not lots go up the walls

We had this place built (in 1991) and I pre wired attic antennas (an coming down the wall in my Radio Room before the house finished

After we moved here I hired a carpenter to take out a portion of the drywall in my office and drill a hole in the wall cap to run a boatload of coaxes. It was not cheap but it was worth it.

I made the mistake however of affixing the coax runs to the studs, that disallowed me the ability to easily pull or push them to adjust the tail outside in the office. A year or two later my kid and I removed that drywall again and removed the straps. This allowed me to use some of the original coax as pulls for new stuff. That worked well as I was planning on painting the office anyway.

The moral of the story is to NOT strap the coax to the studs when running into the attic!

 

[cactus360]

It basically comes down to your unique situation and what your expectations are. I have a pretty tall house, Victorian Farm Style. I run my GMRS antenna in the attic which is about 3 stories off the ground. I get very good performance.

My system performance is almost completely dictated by topography. Utilizing RF propagation modeling and line of sight calculators I found moving my antenna up, even quite a bit higher, will not make much of a difference. So in other words, moving it outside just isn't worth my time or money as its performing as I expect it to.

If I had a one story ranch I would likely feel differently and try to wring out every bit of performance by moving it higher and outside.

 

[Audiodave1]

I have used a mix of attic and outdoor rx antennas for 30 years. Currently have attic discone, MANY Yagi's VHF thru 900. The construction of my house is such that most stations RX thru the side with no metallic interference from from siding and it's over the garage. Put a floor in. A couple 700/800's aim thru the non-ferrous roofing. Similar outdoor Yagi's UHF-850 on a 3" galvanized pole and similar elevation work a little better on average for my monitoring radius. Yeah, there's AC power here and there in the attic.

 

[Pape]

I got a D130NJ and a DPD ADS-B in the attic with some "good" result.
Over 65 miles on 150 mhz and 375 on ads-b.
I do not expect much more if I was to move it outside except maybe loosing some blind spot.