Out door antenna out of the question

[Stavro35]

Hello all
And greeting's from Bainbridge island Washington. It looks like the use of an out door antenna is going to be out of the question. At least the type of out door antenna I want to use.I had a small active antenna from Grove enterprises that worked great where I used to live. It was a small "rubber ducky" that you couldn't see unless you were REALLY looking for it. I might be stuck with just a long wire. But the thing that I really want is that boost I got from the active antenna. Surely someone out there lives in a complex where they couldn't have an antenna out doors and came up with a solution that worked just as well? I surely hope so! HELP!

 

[tom_guess]

Look at the Ventenna.

www.ventenna.com/

 

[n8chb]

Hello all
And greeting's from Bainbridge island Washington. It looks like the use of an out door antenna is going to be out of the question. At least the type of out door antenna I want to use.I had a small active antenna from Grove enterprises that worked great where I used to live. It was a small "rubber ducky" that you couldn't see unless you were REALLY looking for it. I might be stuck with just a long wire. But the thing that I really want is that boost I got from the active antenna. Surely someone out there lives in a complex where they couldn't have an antenna out doors and came up with a solution that worked just as well? I surely hope so! HELP!

Hi,

I’m going to assume your not talking about frequencies below 30 MHz.
Mobile antennas are one thing that could be tried. The biggest problem to overcome is inside of most dwellings acts like an RF jail. All of the outside walls and the roof are usually shielded by metal foil insulation. Away from an outside wall is best.

You will have to experiment on the best place to mount it. Possibly near or on a window towards the transmitting station with some suction cups.

73

Roger

 

[brandon]

I lived in an apartment and had some wire stung around the walls of my room, it worked pretty good. In the morning I could hear the Asian MWARA's quite good. I've also used the LF Engineering H800 active antenna... it's not the best for anything above 15 MHz but it worked very well for 3-10 MHz ranges and exceptionally good on AM BCB.

You might try one of the coax loops... I've heard they work really well.
See this URL for info: http://www.greertech.com/hfloop/mymagloop.html

And if you are monitoring from an apartment the MFJ-1026 can be your best friend when it comes to eliminating noise and interference. I was able to wipe pretty much any man-made noise with this unit.

 

[ka3jjz]

I've lived in condos of fairly modern construction (including alum siding and metal foil insulation in the walls) for 20 years and they're hardly a Faraday cage. RF Leakage happens all around you, and you simply don't realize it. Joints where siding meet, parts of the roof that are not metallic, attics, windows, ect all allow for ingress of RF.

Actually you want to get as close to an outside wall as possible, without having to put up with all the Romex, cable tv and other junk that's probably in it. A difficult solution to put it mildly. But there are some solutions...

Stavro, exactly what active antenna do you have? The LF Engineering H800 or H900? And do you have an attic? If you do, then get up there (carefully) and try to put the antenna in a spot that's as far away from all that blasted RF-carrying wiring as you can get. Sometimes there's a quiet spot where an antenna will work (I have such a spot in my attic - I just can't get all the antennas to it, darn it...) well. It takes some experimentation to get it right.

Extra amplification in an antenna system that's indoors can be a tricky issue. If you use too much, you may end up amplifying the ambient noise in the receiver, along with the noise sources you're already hearing and the signal you want. That's not a solution - that's just an invitation to frustration. This is one time when less really is more....

If you have the room for a 'long wire' (and even that is a misnomer - most folks really mean a 'random wire' - a true long wire could never fit in a condo...) then there are a couple of possible solutions. These all have links either in the Loops wiki page or HF antennas wiki page, and I would encourage you to read up on both before proceeding...

a. On the 'Low Noise Receive Only Coax Loop antennas for 160-10 meter HF Bands (whew! that's a long title), there's a fairly simple 50 foot loop that ought to get your attention (about 1/3 of the way down the page). A tuner is pretty much required for something like this, but they're rather inexpensive for receive only purposes.

b. The PAR EF-SWL antenna is another distinct possibility. In fact, I have yet to hear of anyone say anything bad about it - even Larry Van Horn of MT likes it...

c. The Carpet Loop - really is 2 parts; a switchbox with a variable cap, and the wire (multi conductor) for the antenna. Not that difficult to build; if you can solder a coax connector, you can build this.

d. The Shortwave SWL Antenna Yahoo group (also found on the HF antennas wiki page) has a few designs in their photos and files section that's worth exploring - including the 'Snake'.

There. That should get you thinking....73s and GL Mike

 

[Stavro35]

I had the LF800 . I DO NOT any more .it was dismantled by a woman who didn't know what the heck she was doing when she started cutting wires .

 

[Declared_Hostile]

It really depends on your location on what you can do. Happen to have a balcony? Maybe you could stick one of those active vertical antennas out there? Some of them are said to be quite good. Sometimes you can hang a very thin wire out of window in a very tall building and no one will notice. Try clamping a wire to the gutter or something metal on the outside of the building. it will probably be a big noise collector but you never know....you might get lucky. Or use those gutters and pipes to hide your antennas. I helped run a wire antenna on the lip of the gutter on top of an apartment building with antenna restrictions. We thought it would pick up terrible RF from the building but it wasn't that bad. The thing actually worked quite well and my friend was thrilled with it. Camouflaged his scanner antenna in much the same way. No one was the wiser.