Indoor 2-meter antenna?

[DaddyHam]

I have restrictions where I live about antennas. But I have a work space that is my shack and it is on the 2nd floor. I was thinking about a J-pole for 2 meter inside. What do people think about this or do you have other suggestions. I have a walk in attic as well but the walk in side is on the other end of the house from the shack space.

 

[teufler]

j pole would work. I have one that was made out of 300ohm twin lead that tacks onto the wall. Another antenna is a tape measure beam. You can search, on the net, for tape measure beam,. Cheap, about $9.00 to build and directional. About 8dbd+ for gain. If you are just working repeaters, a mag mount stuck on a pizza pan works good too.

 

[khooke]

I don't have much experience on 2m, but I did use my Arrow satellite beam pointing towards the repeater I wanted to work for a while sitting on an camera tripod in my office, and then most recently built a 1/4wave ground plane from some copper wire (plans online) and had it perched on the end of a piece of pvc pipe in the corner of my second floor office where my shack is. Both worked fine for local repeaters out to about 50 miles. I just moved the 1/4 wave up into my attic and it gained a couple of points on the s meter on receive which I thought was surprising as it's only about another 10 feet above where it was.

I did notice that the swr varied depending on location in my office - sitting in the middle of the room away from anything was the best. Closer to walls in the corner of the room obviously looked better but the swr went up slightly, I'm guessing due to close proximity to other metal objects etc.

 

[n4yek]

This is an excellent work around to antenna restrictions:
Ventenna

 

[DaddyHam]

Thanks for the information. I may build the measuring tape beam to get started.

 

[W4EMS]

Look at the Comet GP-3. Reasonably short and inexpensive. I have one in my attic and can hit all the local machines in middle TN.

 

[ka3jjz]

I used a small 3 el beam on a 2m repeater that worked like a champ. Ran a SWL net for almost 10 years on that antenna...Mike

 

[AK9R]

Are you interested in working local 2m repeaters, operating on 2m FM simplex, or making 2m CW/SSB contacts? The answer will determine what antenna you need.

For local 2m repeaters, a twin-lead J-pole attached to the wall may be sufficient given your 2nd floor location. Keep the J-pole, especially the lower third, away from metal objects as that will upset the magnetic field in that part of the antenna. An omnidirectional vertical antenna in the attic would perform slightly better than the J-pole attached to your wall, but may not be necessary depending on how distant the repeaters are that you want to work.

For 2m FM simplex or 2m CW/SSB, you may need a beam antenna to do what you want to do. That will probably push your antenna to the attic. Remember that most FM communications are vertically polarized so the beam elements will run vertically while on CW and SSB most comms are horizontally polarized so the beam elements will run horizontally. The orientation of the antenna may affect what you can fit into your attic.