I am currently using an Icom-R75 with an endfedz par antenna. I am very pleased with the results but would always like better performance. I was recently thinking of upgrading my antenna. Does anyone here have any suggestions? I live in Pittsburgh and I mostly listen to utilities and Ham frequencies. My Par is an improvement over the other antennas I have used, but I would still like to improve more. Are verticals better than the PAR set up as a horizontal or slopper?? Any help would be appreciated.
HF antenna
- Thread starter lewg26
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ka3jjz
Wiki Admin Emeritus
You would have to be a bit more specific about whether you have some space outdoors to put up other antennas - and how much. Verticals are good antennas but have a downside - they are very sensitive to man made noise sources.
If memory serves, the folks that have reviewed the PAR against other antennas - such as the Grove Skywire or a off fed Windom - have noted that the PAR is a challenge to beat. Sometimes the other antenna wins, sometimes the PAR does. Certainly mounting the PAR in different configurations will bring somewhat different results. That's the fun of experimenting :.>>
We have numerous other HF antenna designs linked in our wiki (link below), and the Shortwave SWL antenna yahoo group has several more.
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/HF_Antennas
73 Mike
If memory serves, the folks that have reviewed the PAR against other antennas - such as the Grove Skywire or a off fed Windom - have noted that the PAR is a challenge to beat. Sometimes the other antenna wins, sometimes the PAR does. Certainly mounting the PAR in different configurations will bring somewhat different results. That's the fun of experimenting :.>>
We have numerous other HF antenna designs linked in our wiki (link below), and the Shortwave SWL antenna yahoo group has several more.
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/HF_Antennas
73 Mike
N1BHH
Member
Building your own antennas can be fun. Wire, wire and more wire. Get it up in the air. If you live with lots of woods out back, find the longest piece of wire and string it over branches, like I did. I had at a previous apartment, a large wooded area out back. I had a buries piece of CATV cable out to the edge of the woods which was used to connect 750 feet of teflon jacketted #22 stranded silvered copper. This was an excellent receiving antenna for Long wave through Short wave and I did have fun listening with that. It was durable despite being #22, because the teflon jacket is unbeatable.
It was only about 8 feet off the ground, I just strolled through the woods pushing the spool up over branches I could reach and that's all there was to it. I didn't terminate it with anything as some people like to do. What a fun project that was, done in about an hour and I had many years of near noise free listening. I even hooked it up through a tuner for use on the ham bands, though I didn't need it with dipoles at 50 feet, but it worked as expected.
It was only about 8 feet off the ground, I just strolled through the woods pushing the spool up over branches I could reach and that's all there was to it. I didn't terminate it with anything as some people like to do. What a fun project that was, done in about an hour and I had many years of near noise free listening. I even hooked it up through a tuner for use on the ham bands, though I didn't need it with dipoles at 50 feet, but it worked as expected.
ka3jjz
Wiki Admin Emeritus
There's another possibility - add more wire to the terminal on the transformer of the PAR. Just save away the original wire if you want to go back to it. More isn't necessarily always better - but as long as you have a robust front end - and I have yet to hear of a R75 seriously overloading - it might be something else to try.
73 Mike
73 Mike
I agree with the "just string out a bunch of wire idea" and see what ya get it will be fun.
i might also suggest a tuner, it doesn't have to be an expensive one. A cheap Mighty Fine Junk one would work fine since you are just receiving. Put the tuner in line and tune to the highest noise level you can get on a vacant area of the band you are wanting to receive. The tuner should help you out from Daylight to about 60 mhz
I have a home brew Flagpole vertical, it is close enough that i can transmit on 10 through 20, just what it was designed to do.
But if i want to listen to 80 meters i just tune the flagpole to where i can receive 80 well. No way i could transmit, as i would just be heating up a lot of coax, but my point being that it makes all the difference in the world on the reception...
i might also suggest a tuner, it doesn't have to be an expensive one. A cheap Mighty Fine Junk one would work fine since you are just receiving. Put the tuner in line and tune to the highest noise level you can get on a vacant area of the band you are wanting to receive. The tuner should help you out from Daylight to about 60 mhz
I have a home brew Flagpole vertical, it is close enough that i can transmit on 10 through 20, just what it was designed to do.
But if i want to listen to 80 meters i just tune the flagpole to where i can receive 80 well. No way i could transmit, as i would just be heating up a lot of coax, but my point being that it makes all the difference in the world on the reception...
Gotta second that string up the wire thought.
I was getting all kinds of noise inside my house no matter what I used... Finally I strung some copper speaker wire out my upstairs window and started picking up a LOT more...but still lots of noise. So...I decided to grab a 10ft piece of shielded RG6 cable and ran that from the receiver to the window...From there I spliced the 50ft or so of copper speaker wire to the RG6. I also took some wire and grounded the RG6 to a cable TV splitter. Now I get very clean signals and pick up a ton of new broadcasts... The experimenting was frustrating at first, but as I started making progress, it became quite fun.
Good luck!
I was getting all kinds of noise inside my house no matter what I used... Finally I strung some copper speaker wire out my upstairs window and started picking up a LOT more...but still lots of noise. So...I decided to grab a 10ft piece of shielded RG6 cable and ran that from the receiver to the window...From there I spliced the 50ft or so of copper speaker wire to the RG6. I also took some wire and grounded the RG6 to a cable TV splitter. Now I get very clean signals and pick up a ton of new broadcasts... The experimenting was frustrating at first, but as I started making progress, it became quite fun.
Good luck!
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