RadioBanter - View Single Post

August 16th 05, 01:09 PM

In article ,
says...
I am livign in an apartment, so I cant transmit (no towers and what
not) so I am looking for what would suit my needs best for HF and
shortwave recption in general

I have googled a bit and havent found much in the way of easy to build
or easy to obtain parts to build antennas

any help would be really appreciated
cheers

I'm in a condo, which is also somewhat restrictive in terms of radio
antennas and transmitters. Don't get discouraged, there are ways around
it. Best thing to do is to look into QRP operation (power levels 5w and
lower). I'm using an FT-817 which won't do any more than that, and a
somewhat stealthily-arranged shorty G5RV antenna for 40m thru 10m, and a
2m vertical up where an old busted-up TV antenna used to be when we
moved in. With that arrangement, I can work all the 2m repeaters in the
area, and on HF I've worked all over the country plus several countries
around the Pacific and into South America. Never had a TVI complaint at
all.

One thing I =did= do was put the antenna up first, and leave it up for a
couple of months before I did any transmitting. I read about one guy
who had a neighbor start complaining immediately after he saw the
antenna the guy put up. Since the antenna wasn't even connected to
anything, the neighbor was caught without an explanation or complaint
about the ham. Fortunately, nobody came by and started complaining so I
proceeded with getting on the air, still no interference complaints and
I've been operating for something like seven years now.

Another good story was a ham who was sitting in his living room watching
the tube -- no radios on in the shack at all -- when a neighbor came by,
furious because he was getting TV interference, and was POSITIVE it was
the fault of this ham. The ham said, let's go see, so they went to the
neighbor's house to look. Sure enough, there was a lot of TVI. The
neighbor said, see, you're screwing up my TV! The ham said, how can
that be? I'm standing right here, no radio in sight, so how can I be
messing up your TV...?

Anyway, consider QRP -- you will be surprised at how much you can
accomplish on only five watts!

--

-- //Steve//

Steve Silverwood, KB6OJS
Fountain Valley, CA
Email: