What antennas are others in our area using?

[lucky43113]

never understood why people chose to live anywhere with all the rules of a HOA

 

[bigRoN18]

never understood why people chose to live anywhere with all the rules of a HOA

Thankfully, my development doesn't have strict HOA rules like others, but when it comes to communications, I don't want to rock the boat. Beyond the fact that if I wanted to put up a tower and put up a large array of HF antennas that I would need to apply for a building permit with my city, it would be an eyesore in my community. I really love my house and I live in a nice community. I don't foresee living here after I retire, I would eventually like to live a little more rural, but there are many advantages to living where I do currently. First, I have AWESOME Internet. I have bi-directional gigabit Internet for less than $75/month with no data restrictions and three static IP addresses (each static IP is an extra $5/month, so it could be less). I haven't found a community that offers this, as well as being in the country. For me, the bandwidth trumps most things. Another is shopping/dining options. Living in Roseville, California, we have a plethora of choices for shopping and dining, although the shopping options are decreasing as online shopping is now delivering on the same day with a larger array of items. I'm hoping broadband really does push out into more rural areas with pricing competitive to urban pricing. I have another 10-15 years before I retire, so here's to hoping that technology reaches everywhere by then.

When I retire and move to a more rural area, I may finally take advantage of having an Amateur Extra class license and go HF. I may do many things I don't do now because of living in a city, but I also have a wife and have to go through "spousal approval" too.

 

[crucialcolin]

First, I have AWESOME Internet. I have bi-directional gigabit Internet for less than $75/month with no data restrictions and three static IP addresses (each static IP is an extra $5/month, so it could be less). I haven't found a community that offers this, as well as being in the country. For me, the bandwidth trumps most things.

Ahh you must have Consolidated aka Surewest with fiber. Where I live in Roseville they haven't upgraded from copper and highly doubt they ever will. Best we can get is 6meg/768k DSL so were stuck with Comcast.

There's a few places in the both the Bay area & Sonoma County with Sonic.net which is just as good if not better. I believe it's like $50 for directional gigabit. My sister has it near Petaluma. I'm jelious LoL.

 

[crucialcolin]

never understood why people chose to live anywhere with all the rules of a HOA

Yeah it's a pain. It would have been a lot easier for me to have just put the antenna on the side of the house and drilled through the wall for the coax. I could have probably got away with it but like BigRon stated I didn't want to rock the boat either. It's actually somewhat of a temporary setup as I don't particularly plan on living there more then anouther year or so anyways.

While everything else works great I'm still not quite pulling Sacramento Regional Radio Communications System the way I would like. I'm not able to lock onto the control channel for P25 and then the active analog side is still quite scratchy. I have a feeling it's going to require a directional type Yagi with high gain in order to get better reception from Roseville.