Over the last 40 years I have lived in a house (currently), several apartments and a townhouse. Since the two homes I have owned (a townhouse and my current one) are in HOA’s I have strict restrictions on antennas. I knew that ahead of time, so I dealt with it. When I lived in apartments, I had landlord issues that also hampered my antenna situation. Sometimes I was able to romance my way around them…
The Desert House:
Going backwards, the house I have owned and lived in for the last decade out in the desert outside of Phoenix is in an HOA that, like most, does not allow outside antennas. Therefore, I have all my antennas in the attic save for a couple. The attic will be a recurring these here, but this story is not about the antennas, it is about running the coax to the shack.
We got into the house in April, just as it started to get hot. I popped a couple mag-mounts onto metal cake pans placed on a tall bookshelf for the summer. They actually worked a lot better than I expected.
That fall I scoped out the attic and decided what antennas I would put where. I started to collect coax for the eventual installation. I had a couple different type of coaxes, with F, BNC, PL259 and N connectors, with a couple different lengths. I wanted the cables on the north wall of the office which was a “wet wall”, the dryer, washer and a slop sink were in the mud room on the other side. This meant that wall was twice the depth behind the drywall.
I then stretched each cable out and numbered them. My plan was to run the cables into the attic; I would then place the antennas as I could and use the shortest cable with the appropriate connector that would reach. The numbering left me the ability to add additional coaxes in the future. I then put a piece of blue tape at the 12-foot mark as I thought that would allow me plenty of tail to connect to the radios.
The wife told me that it had to look presentable and no holes in the ceiling like the last house. That meant the wires had to come down the wall. I told her that I would have to pay a carpenter to do the work and she agreed to let me. (She handles the money in our house.) I found one that my neighbors had used and invited him over to scope out the work. I told him I wanted the coax runs to come out a hole approximately here (pointing to a place on the office wall) and that they would go into the attic. I wanted 12 feet of tail in the office, hence the blue tape on the cables. The rest would be left in the attic for later connection to antennas.
My carpenter gave me a quote; the wife approved the expenditure and a couple days later they came out to do the work. He first took out a section of the wall between the two studs from the ceiling down to the future hole the cables would come out of. He then drilled a hole in the cap to run the cables thru. Next, he ran the cables and tacked them to the studs, half on one side and half on the other, inside the same cavity. (Note: This was my idea and a huge mistake!) He then replaced the drywall and put in two surface mount plastic outlet inserts, mudded the work and was done. I then had the whole interior of the house painted, including this wall. (We had planned on that anyway.)
This worked well but I had a couple issues. First, there were several extra cables as I installed more coaxes than antennas as well as more antennas than radios. While this would allow me flexibility, I had to deal with these. Also, some of the radios were less than 12 feet away from the hole. Third, when I needed more length, either in the attic or the office, the coax was tacked down inside the studs, so it was difficult at best to pull the extra length either direction.
When I had the big radio cabinet it was not so much of an issue. I just ran all the cables into it as a single bundle and left the unused ones in the cabinet. Before and after the cabinet however it was a different story. If I had too much in the office I would stuff it back into the hole. If it was too short, I would try to pull it thru but that usually would not work so I was stuck with adding jumpers.
Eventually I decided to add a patch panel. This would allow me to run all the coaxes with the same termination point and make it easy to swap antennas around in the office by swapping jumpers. My son was coming out for a couple weeks, so I had him bring his tools (He is a good amateur carpenter). He then took down the same section of the wall, we removed the straps holding the coaxes to the studs, added a couple new runs and removed one that went bad. We pulled into the attic the cables, leaving a foot or so to allow me to pull the panel off for maintenance. We (he) then replaced and mudded the drywall, this time leaving a 9-inch slot between the studs. We (he) then repainted that wall.
I bought a custom-made patch panel from Front Panel Express, you basically design the one you want online, and they make it for you. It cost around $100 or so but was worth the money. I selected the thickness of the panel, the size, the rounded corners, the size and placements of the holes and even the color and labeling. It took a couple weeks but when it arrived it was perfectly as ordered.
By then I already had all the double-female panel-mount connectors for BNC, F, SO239 and N and the necessary patch cables to the radios. When the panel came in, I merely disconnected the patch cables, installed these connectors to the panel, mounted the panel to the studs and reconnected the patch cables to the radios.
Over the years I have changed things around. I removed the RG6QS cables and bought 12 or so 50’ 9913’s as well as 3 75’s RG8X cables. I rearranged the patch panel a bit as well. The issue I had was the new cable, it was very stiff so was a big problem running it thru the wall. My buddy was up in the attic working the cable thru the hole in the cap while I was in the office feeding it.
More recently I installed 4 new antennas outside. My kid was here and helped me run new RG8X coax runs into the attic and then out the peak vent on the side of the house. I installed a 20M dipole on the side of the house along the roof edge and then a 10M and 20M end fed along either edge of the crown. I kept one for a spare, which I used more recently for an Omni-X mounted to a satellite dish mount. If the HOA complains I will tell them it is a TV antenna, which they can do nothing about. I actually connected a TV to the multicoupler and can get a few channels, but most are blocked by the nearby mountains that are between me and the city. If the HOA causes a stink I will remind them of the federal law protecting TV antennas and let them know I am considering raising it 10 or 20 feet or so and perhaps getting a larger antenna. That ought to quiet them down.
Running these new coaxes was actually pretty easy, I had an unused coax I used as a cable pull and taped the 4 new ones at intervals along it and pulled them thru.
Once of these days I would like to replace all the coax with 9913 SuperFlex, ideally I would buy a large roll of it and install the proper connectors at each end but that is a problem for future Rich. Since I have pretty much stabilized my shack to a smaller set of radios I really only need about 6 or 7 antennas, so it is not too unreasonable. Maybe next winter…
The townhouse:
The prior home that we lived in for 20 years was a 3-level townhouse, or as some people called it, a quadra-home. I had a basement, a ground floor with a living room and kitchen and an upstairs with the two bedrooms. One of these bedrooms was my office and I early on figured a neat way to get the coaxes run to the attic. The room had a closet on one wall, so I cut a small hole inside the closet ceiling to the attic and popped in a plastic downspout insert. This kept the cables from damaging the drywall. I then stuffed an old towel to fill the rest of the void so that the AC or heat did not escape into the attic.
I removed the sliding doors to that closet; this allowed me to extend the interior space of this rather small second bedroom. There was a wall section remaining that nicely hid the coaxes. That space became the radio desk area, neatly hiding the coax.
I was able to use shorted coax runs here; the furthest antenna was 30 feet away. I used a mix of 50- and 25-foot coaxes, mostly RG58 with a couple RG8 and RG6QS runs. When we put the house on the market I recovered the antennas I wanted to keep and abandoned the old coax in the attic. I then patched the drywall hole in the ceiling and slapped some paint on it. Being in an almost invisible corner of a closet I doubt the new residents would ever see it. They might be a little confused if they ever go into the attic where they would find a bunch of wire and several old scanner antennas.
The last apartment:
The last apartment I lived in for 6 or 7 years worked pretty well for me radio-wise. It had an accessible attic, and the hatch was in my bedroom closet. As I had a roommate, I ran the coaxes into my room and placed my desk next to the closet to keep the coaxes short. I cut a hole in the wall between the closet and the bedroom and used electrical outlet frames so that when I moved, I could just remove the coax and put blank electric outlet covers there instead of repairing the drywall. My girlfriend was the rental agent there and suggested that I do that, apparently that is a trick they used for repairing tenant damage to avoid having to repair the drywall and paint.
The old apartment:
For a couple years I rented an apartment on the top floor in an old (1910 built) 3-story building. I never met the landlord, I at first sublet it from a friend and took over the lease later. The place had a slate roof with a couple chimneys on the roof. The building style looked similar to that of Hogwarts, when the Harry Potter films came out I remarked how much my old apartment building looked like that.
Since slate is pretty slippery, even when dry, and the building was old so I imagine the tiles might break, I was hesitant to go out there myself to install a dual-band and a scanner antenna. So, I asked a friend to do it for me. This guy was more brave than smart and agreed to do the work in exchange for a case of beer. I still wonder if that might have been to replace one he may have drunk before going up on the roof. Regardless he installed the antennas and dropped the coaxes to me hanging out the window and found his way back into the apartment. I used a piece of 2x2 with a gouge in it to allow the wires to go thru. I added some weather stripping, and all was well with the world. I then drilled a pair of holes thru the window frame and the window to put a couple 16p nails in to prevent someone from opening the window from the outside and I was done.
The first apartment:
After I moved out of my parents’ house to my first apartment I used back-of-set antennas out of necessity. My apartment was on the 3rd floor of a 3-story suburban complex. I soon met the girl who worked in the rental office and pretty soon after that we were dating. Thru her I was able to get a key to the utility closet and roof hatch. She let me install a pair or small RS scanner antennas on the mansard roof. I dropped the coaxes along a drainpipe leading from the rook that ran fairly close to my bedroom window. I ran these thru a corner of the screen I peeled back and again used a small piece of wood with a gouge cut in it along with some weatherstripping to allow the cables into the room.
I did a smart thing and made a copy of the utility room keys before I returned them to the girlfriend. Eventually she got a new job elsewhere, so I was still able to go up and replace one of the antennas a year or two later.
My Parents’ house:
I got the scanner bug when I was a kid. The stuff I listened to was easily heard with back-of-set antennas, so I did not need an outside antenna. I did try hooking the scanner up to the TV antenna in the attic, Dad had installed a distribution amp and had run ladder line to the living room, basement and master bedroom. When I got my own TV, we rand a lead to my bedroom as well. I tried hooking that up to a scanner and it worked pretty well. I should have used a 300-to-75-ohm matching transformer, but I was not as savvy as I am now.
I did have a CB antenna on the roof back then; the CB craze was in full swing while I was in middle school and high school. I had a 5/8 wave vertical on a tripod on the roof, with the coax ran in thru an attic vent then down a hole in the closet of my bedroom. It worked great and eventually I did use it for the scanner when low band was running.
While a lot of this tale may give you some ideas to use in your shack, there are a lot of mistakes I made along the way. First off, I should never have used the stiff 9913 stuff, I should have sprung for the extra money and bought SuperFlex. It has the same or better loss factor and is a lot easier to work with. Next, I should not have tacked down the coax to the studs. It made it difficult or impossible to pull out in either direction. I finally got smart and left a couple pull strings between the attic and office for future use.
The Desert House:
Going backwards, the house I have owned and lived in for the last decade out in the desert outside of Phoenix is in an HOA that, like most, does not allow outside antennas. Therefore, I have all my antennas in the attic save for a couple. The attic will be a recurring these here, but this story is not about the antennas, it is about running the coax to the shack.
We got into the house in April, just as it started to get hot. I popped a couple mag-mounts onto metal cake pans placed on a tall bookshelf for the summer. They actually worked a lot better than I expected.
That fall I scoped out the attic and decided what antennas I would put where. I started to collect coax for the eventual installation. I had a couple different type of coaxes, with F, BNC, PL259 and N connectors, with a couple different lengths. I wanted the cables on the north wall of the office which was a “wet wall”, the dryer, washer and a slop sink were in the mud room on the other side. This meant that wall was twice the depth behind the drywall.
I then stretched each cable out and numbered them. My plan was to run the cables into the attic; I would then place the antennas as I could and use the shortest cable with the appropriate connector that would reach. The numbering left me the ability to add additional coaxes in the future. I then put a piece of blue tape at the 12-foot mark as I thought that would allow me plenty of tail to connect to the radios.
The wife told me that it had to look presentable and no holes in the ceiling like the last house. That meant the wires had to come down the wall. I told her that I would have to pay a carpenter to do the work and she agreed to let me. (She handles the money in our house.) I found one that my neighbors had used and invited him over to scope out the work. I told him I wanted the coax runs to come out a hole approximately here (pointing to a place on the office wall) and that they would go into the attic. I wanted 12 feet of tail in the office, hence the blue tape on the cables. The rest would be left in the attic for later connection to antennas.
My carpenter gave me a quote; the wife approved the expenditure and a couple days later they came out to do the work. He first took out a section of the wall between the two studs from the ceiling down to the future hole the cables would come out of. He then drilled a hole in the cap to run the cables thru. Next, he ran the cables and tacked them to the studs, half on one side and half on the other, inside the same cavity. (Note: This was my idea and a huge mistake!) He then replaced the drywall and put in two surface mount plastic outlet inserts, mudded the work and was done. I then had the whole interior of the house painted, including this wall. (We had planned on that anyway.)
This worked well but I had a couple issues. First, there were several extra cables as I installed more coaxes than antennas as well as more antennas than radios. While this would allow me flexibility, I had to deal with these. Also, some of the radios were less than 12 feet away from the hole. Third, when I needed more length, either in the attic or the office, the coax was tacked down inside the studs, so it was difficult at best to pull the extra length either direction.
When I had the big radio cabinet it was not so much of an issue. I just ran all the cables into it as a single bundle and left the unused ones in the cabinet. Before and after the cabinet however it was a different story. If I had too much in the office I would stuff it back into the hole. If it was too short, I would try to pull it thru but that usually would not work so I was stuck with adding jumpers.
Eventually I decided to add a patch panel. This would allow me to run all the coaxes with the same termination point and make it easy to swap antennas around in the office by swapping jumpers. My son was coming out for a couple weeks, so I had him bring his tools (He is a good amateur carpenter). He then took down the same section of the wall, we removed the straps holding the coaxes to the studs, added a couple new runs and removed one that went bad. We pulled into the attic the cables, leaving a foot or so to allow me to pull the panel off for maintenance. We (he) then replaced and mudded the drywall, this time leaving a 9-inch slot between the studs. We (he) then repainted that wall.
I bought a custom-made patch panel from Front Panel Express, you basically design the one you want online, and they make it for you. It cost around $100 or so but was worth the money. I selected the thickness of the panel, the size, the rounded corners, the size and placements of the holes and even the color and labeling. It took a couple weeks but when it arrived it was perfectly as ordered.
By then I already had all the double-female panel-mount connectors for BNC, F, SO239 and N and the necessary patch cables to the radios. When the panel came in, I merely disconnected the patch cables, installed these connectors to the panel, mounted the panel to the studs and reconnected the patch cables to the radios.
Over the years I have changed things around. I removed the RG6QS cables and bought 12 or so 50’ 9913’s as well as 3 75’s RG8X cables. I rearranged the patch panel a bit as well. The issue I had was the new cable, it was very stiff so was a big problem running it thru the wall. My buddy was up in the attic working the cable thru the hole in the cap while I was in the office feeding it.
More recently I installed 4 new antennas outside. My kid was here and helped me run new RG8X coax runs into the attic and then out the peak vent on the side of the house. I installed a 20M dipole on the side of the house along the roof edge and then a 10M and 20M end fed along either edge of the crown. I kept one for a spare, which I used more recently for an Omni-X mounted to a satellite dish mount. If the HOA complains I will tell them it is a TV antenna, which they can do nothing about. I actually connected a TV to the multicoupler and can get a few channels, but most are blocked by the nearby mountains that are between me and the city. If the HOA causes a stink I will remind them of the federal law protecting TV antennas and let them know I am considering raising it 10 or 20 feet or so and perhaps getting a larger antenna. That ought to quiet them down.
Running these new coaxes was actually pretty easy, I had an unused coax I used as a cable pull and taped the 4 new ones at intervals along it and pulled them thru.
Once of these days I would like to replace all the coax with 9913 SuperFlex, ideally I would buy a large roll of it and install the proper connectors at each end but that is a problem for future Rich. Since I have pretty much stabilized my shack to a smaller set of radios I really only need about 6 or 7 antennas, so it is not too unreasonable. Maybe next winter…
The townhouse:
The prior home that we lived in for 20 years was a 3-level townhouse, or as some people called it, a quadra-home. I had a basement, a ground floor with a living room and kitchen and an upstairs with the two bedrooms. One of these bedrooms was my office and I early on figured a neat way to get the coaxes run to the attic. The room had a closet on one wall, so I cut a small hole inside the closet ceiling to the attic and popped in a plastic downspout insert. This kept the cables from damaging the drywall. I then stuffed an old towel to fill the rest of the void so that the AC or heat did not escape into the attic.
I removed the sliding doors to that closet; this allowed me to extend the interior space of this rather small second bedroom. There was a wall section remaining that nicely hid the coaxes. That space became the radio desk area, neatly hiding the coax.
I was able to use shorted coax runs here; the furthest antenna was 30 feet away. I used a mix of 50- and 25-foot coaxes, mostly RG58 with a couple RG8 and RG6QS runs. When we put the house on the market I recovered the antennas I wanted to keep and abandoned the old coax in the attic. I then patched the drywall hole in the ceiling and slapped some paint on it. Being in an almost invisible corner of a closet I doubt the new residents would ever see it. They might be a little confused if they ever go into the attic where they would find a bunch of wire and several old scanner antennas.
The last apartment:
The last apartment I lived in for 6 or 7 years worked pretty well for me radio-wise. It had an accessible attic, and the hatch was in my bedroom closet. As I had a roommate, I ran the coaxes into my room and placed my desk next to the closet to keep the coaxes short. I cut a hole in the wall between the closet and the bedroom and used electrical outlet frames so that when I moved, I could just remove the coax and put blank electric outlet covers there instead of repairing the drywall. My girlfriend was the rental agent there and suggested that I do that, apparently that is a trick they used for repairing tenant damage to avoid having to repair the drywall and paint.
The old apartment:
For a couple years I rented an apartment on the top floor in an old (1910 built) 3-story building. I never met the landlord, I at first sublet it from a friend and took over the lease later. The place had a slate roof with a couple chimneys on the roof. The building style looked similar to that of Hogwarts, when the Harry Potter films came out I remarked how much my old apartment building looked like that.
Since slate is pretty slippery, even when dry, and the building was old so I imagine the tiles might break, I was hesitant to go out there myself to install a dual-band and a scanner antenna. So, I asked a friend to do it for me. This guy was more brave than smart and agreed to do the work in exchange for a case of beer. I still wonder if that might have been to replace one he may have drunk before going up on the roof. Regardless he installed the antennas and dropped the coaxes to me hanging out the window and found his way back into the apartment. I used a piece of 2x2 with a gouge in it to allow the wires to go thru. I added some weather stripping, and all was well with the world. I then drilled a pair of holes thru the window frame and the window to put a couple 16p nails in to prevent someone from opening the window from the outside and I was done.
The first apartment:
After I moved out of my parents’ house to my first apartment I used back-of-set antennas out of necessity. My apartment was on the 3rd floor of a 3-story suburban complex. I soon met the girl who worked in the rental office and pretty soon after that we were dating. Thru her I was able to get a key to the utility closet and roof hatch. She let me install a pair or small RS scanner antennas on the mansard roof. I dropped the coaxes along a drainpipe leading from the rook that ran fairly close to my bedroom window. I ran these thru a corner of the screen I peeled back and again used a small piece of wood with a gouge cut in it along with some weatherstripping to allow the cables into the room.
I did a smart thing and made a copy of the utility room keys before I returned them to the girlfriend. Eventually she got a new job elsewhere, so I was still able to go up and replace one of the antennas a year or two later.
My Parents’ house:
I got the scanner bug when I was a kid. The stuff I listened to was easily heard with back-of-set antennas, so I did not need an outside antenna. I did try hooking the scanner up to the TV antenna in the attic, Dad had installed a distribution amp and had run ladder line to the living room, basement and master bedroom. When I got my own TV, we rand a lead to my bedroom as well. I tried hooking that up to a scanner and it worked pretty well. I should have used a 300-to-75-ohm matching transformer, but I was not as savvy as I am now.
I did have a CB antenna on the roof back then; the CB craze was in full swing while I was in middle school and high school. I had a 5/8 wave vertical on a tripod on the roof, with the coax ran in thru an attic vent then down a hole in the closet of my bedroom. It worked great and eventually I did use it for the scanner when low band was running.
While a lot of this tale may give you some ideas to use in your shack, there are a lot of mistakes I made along the way. First off, I should never have used the stiff 9913 stuff, I should have sprung for the extra money and bought SuperFlex. It has the same or better loss factor and is a lot easier to work with. Next, I should not have tacked down the coax to the studs. It made it difficult or impossible to pull out in either direction. I finally got smart and left a couple pull strings between the attic and office for future use.
