The better your antenna the more success you will have making contacts.
Long wire antenna attic.
It was a lot of work but i ve gotten a lot better at things and i d say overall.
It s a long way from the rabbit ear designs you might think of when picturing indoor antennas and much cooler looking than the metal contraptions often found outdoors.
Installation of a wire antenna in my small attic as previously mentioned i ve recently built my first wire antenna.
The infamous attic dipole.
Mac af4ps fp 51 note.
Green is the 15m long wire bicone antenna mounted in the loft yellow is a 40m long doublet fed with 450 ohm ladder line and an auto atu at the base blue is the 40m long ladder line fed doublet strapped as a tee and fed against 16 ground radials.
In order to really test it i decided to skip the step of a temporary outdoor deployment and just go ahead and put it in to it s final location.
This was installed at a previous qth i will be the first or millionth remember i m from fl to affirm that the antenna is the determining factor for success when it comes to one s station set up.
Feeding a dipole off center makes the feed line act as part of the antenna unbalanced load thus it will pick up even more emi on the feed line.
Loft attic antennas for restricted spaces.
Zigzagging a bunch of wire in the attic will pick up distant radio signals poorly but electromagnetic interference emi from household electronics very well.
With his antenna matching unit providing an acceptable match he s on the air making contacts.
Another local uses an hf loop antenna tacked up around the circumference of the ceiling of a second floor bedroom.
The most important is the physical size of the antenna used then its radiation pattern.
The 1 2l dipole radiator driven element is 10 m long or so.
Instead staple a closed tie wrap forming a loop at each stapling point.
Dipole and long wire antennas can also be used with mobile outdoor style auto tuners feeding them in an attic space.
Let s imagine a hf antenna resonant on the 20 meters band.
The most economical and highly recommended measure is to insulate the bare antenna wire.