RadioBanter - Outside Antenna

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How did you solder that ground wire to that water pipe?
cuhulin

wrote in message
...
How did you solder that ground wire to that water pipe?
cuhulin

Hi
I just cleaned the pipe itself with a wire brush till it was shining like
new, got a jubilee clip ( car hose clip) and put the ground wire through the
clip, tightened the clip on the pipe then used my heavy duty solder gun, I
ran a test with my multimeter and it is giving a good ground.
cheers
Rikk

About four years ago,that married Irish woman in Bognor Regis,England
hired a guy to repair a leaky pipe in their toilet.The guy didn't know
anything at all about doing plumbing repair jobs.He tried to solder that
leaky pipe instead of replacing the leaky pipe with a new pipe.I guess
old Tony bought quite a few pints at the pubs over there with the money
they paid him.
cuhulin

On Sun, 05 Mar 2006 13:25:52 GMT, "Rikk"
wrote:

Hi
I am wondering if I have my longwire set correctly, maybe you could advise
please.
At the moment I have a sloping long-wire of about 50 foot, going from the
top of a mast on my house about 35 foot tall to the top of a washing line
post about 12 foot tall. I have connected the lonwire to my radio by means
of CB-coax, what I have done is to attach the centre core of the coax to the
longwire and I have cut the outer sheath on the coax near to the ground and
connected an earhtwire that is soldered to a cold water main supply pipe as
an earth.
Only the centre wire on the coax is connected to the actual longwire.

Is there a way I could do better.

I am thinking about getting an active antenna, the Sony AN-1

Would this work better for me or is there a better alternative available.
I am running an Icom R72
thanks
Rikk

If you don't have too much man-made noise inside your house, you might
consider bringing the random wire all the way to the 500-ohm terminal
on the back of your receiver, and run your ground wire from the
terminal next to it to your cold water pipe. This gets rid of the
mismatch between your high impedance antenna and low impedance coax,
and you don't need the balun at all, which is fine, because the balun
only provides an approximate impedance transformation.

Another alternative would be to bring the long wire into your house,
and attach it to an inexpensive random wire antenna tuner, such as an
MFJ 16010, about $49 US. Then run a short length of coax from the
tuner to your radio's 50-ohm input. As you go to each new frequency,
peak the knobs for maximum signal strength.

Yet another alternative, keep your current antenna; add the balun to
it or whatever. But put up a 2nd antenna, perhaps aimed in a different
direction, and run it to your high impedance terminal. Switch between
the two antennas for best reception on a given signal. You could do
some interesting A-B comparisons on antennas.

Bob
k5qwg

In article ,
"Rikk" wrote:

"Rikk" wrote in message
...
Hi I am wondering if I have my longwire set correctly, maybe you
could advise please. At the moment I have a sloping long-wire of
about 50 foot, going from the top of a mast on my house about 35
foot tall to the top of a washing line post about 12 foot tall. I
have connected the lonwire to my radio by means of CB-coax, what I
have done is to attach the centre core of the coax to the longwire
and I have cut the outer sheath on the coax near to the ground and
connected an earhtwire that is soldered to a cold water main supply
pipe as an earth. Only the centre wire on the coax is connected to
the actual longwire.

Is there a way I could do better.

I am thinking about getting an active antenna, the Sony AN-1

Would this work better for me or is there a better alternative
available. I am running an Icom R72 thanks Rikk

Hi Guys Thanks all very much for your help, I appreciate your
comments, I have opted to order a balun from a supplier mention on
this thread and see how it goes from there. I shall also try a few of
your other suggestions as they are really interesting in therory. As
you can probably see, I am relativly new to sw and until now have
been using the SW77 on it's telescopic antenna, but time for me to
move forward a bit, so I will see what I can do with the R72 thanks
again

You are off to a good start and as someone else in the thread already
mentioned you could improve the random wire performance with a UNUN
impedance matching transformer at the coax/random wire junction.

This wire should already be working better then the whip. You can tune
through the bands to get an idea how well it is working. Usually good
wire performance will start at the 1/4 wavelength frequency of the wire
length and will work well from that frequency on up except at even
multiples of that 1/4 wavelength so 1/2 wavelength would not be good.

As long as the even multiple does not fall on a SW band you are OK.

Some people use more than one wire. I think this is a game plan that
DxAce uses with two separate wires one twice the length of the other. I
think he uses a 100 and 200 foot lengths. Where one would be at zero
volts at the end of the wire the other would be at maximum. If at a
non-resonate wavelength they could look the same.

Since your long length is 50 foot you tie on another 25 foot wire at the
coax junction and hang the far end off the 50 foot wire a few feet with
an insulator of fishing line as an example. Not as clean as two separate
wires but it should work well.

A 50 foot wire in air should be 1/4 wave resonate at about 9.7 MHz. The
9 MHz band would be your best to pick up signals with the 50 foot wire.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Telamon wrote:

In article ,
"Rikk" wrote:

"Rikk" wrote in message
...
Hi I am wondering if I have my longwire set correctly, maybe you
could advise please. At the moment I have a sloping long-wire of
about 50 foot, going from the top of a mast on my house about 35
foot tall to the top of a washing line post about 12 foot tall. I
have connected the lonwire to my radio by means of CB-coax, what I
have done is to attach the centre core of the coax to the longwire
and I have cut the outer sheath on the coax near to the ground and
connected an earhtwire that is soldered to a cold water main supply
pipe as an earth. Only the centre wire on the coax is connected to
the actual longwire.

Is there a way I could do better.

I am thinking about getting an active antenna, the Sony AN-1

Would this work better for me or is there a better alternative
available. I am running an Icom R72 thanks Rikk

Hi Guys Thanks all very much for your help, I appreciate your
comments, I have opted to order a balun from a supplier mention on
this thread and see how it goes from there. I shall also try a few of
your other suggestions as they are really interesting in therory. As
you can probably see, I am relativly new to sw and until now have
been using the SW77 on it's telescopic antenna, but time for me to
move forward a bit, so I will see what I can do with the R72 thanks
again

You are off to a good start and as someone else in the thread already
mentioned you could improve the random wire performance with a UNUN
impedance matching transformer at the coax/random wire junction.

This wire should already be working better then the whip. You can tune
through the bands to get an idea how well it is working. Usually good
wire performance will start at the 1/4 wavelength frequency of the wire
length and will work well from that frequency on up except at even
multiples of that 1/4 wavelength so 1/2 wavelength would not be good.

As long as the even multiple does not fall on a SW band you are OK.

Some people use more than one wire. I think this is a game plan that
DxAce uses with two separate wires one twice the length of the other. I
think he uses a 100 and 200 foot lengths. Where one would be at zero
volts at the end of the wire the other would be at maximum. If at a
non-resonate wavelength they could look the same.

Since your long length is 50 foot you tie on another 25 foot wire at the
coax junction and hang the far end off the 50 foot wire a few feet with
an insulator of fishing line as an example. Not as clean as two separate
wires but it should work well.

A 50 foot wire in air should be 1/4 wave resonate at about 9.7 MHz. The
9 MHz band would be your best to pick up signals with the 50 foot wire.

I'm using a 70' wire running N-S and a 200' wire running W-E.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

And after she had her bathroom completely remodeled (she got ahold of a
plumbing company by the name of Brough,or something like that) after
that Tony guy messed it all up,she emailed me a photo of her newly
remodeled bathroom.But the photo is turned 90 degrees to the left.I have
to crane my head 90 degrees to see the photo right side up.
cuhulin

Rikk wrote:
"Rikk" wrote in message
...

Hi
I am wondering if I have my longwire set correctly, maybe you could advise
please.
At the moment I have a sloping long-wire of about 50 foot, going from the
top of a mast on my house about 35 foot tall to the top of a washing line
post about 12 foot tall. I have connected the lonwire to my radio by means
of CB-coax, what I have done is to attach the centre core of the coax to
the longwire and I have cut the outer sheath on the coax near to the
ground and connected an earhtwire that is soldered to a cold water main
supply pipe as an earth.
Only the centre wire on the coax is connected to the actual longwire.

Is there a way I could do better.

I am thinking about getting an active antenna, the Sony AN-1

Would this work better for me or is there a better alternative available.
I am running an Icom R72
thanks
Rikk

Hi Guys
Thanks all very much for your help, I appreciate your comments, I have opted
to order a balun from a supplier mention on this thread and see how it goes
from there.
I shall also try a few of your other suggestions as they are really
interesting in therory.
As you can probably see, I am relativly new to sw and until now have been
using the SW77 on it's telescopic antenna, but time for me to move forward a
bit, so I will see what I can do with the R72
thanks again
Rikk
United Kingdom

The antenna configuration you have is similar to a 'sloper' design where
one end is higher than the other. To reduce the reception of noise from
appliances in your home, it's better to locate the balun (unun) near the
ground (earth) instead of in the air at the end of the antenna. This
means you should extend the feed end of the antenna to the ground with a
single vertical wire (not coax) and connect that wire to the high
impedance input of the balun. The low impedance output of the balun goes
to the coax that should run on/in the ground to the house. Having the
balun and coax near the ground will allow you to use a short ground wire
from the balun to a ground rod near by. This helps to keep noise off the
shield of the coax.
This antenna system (inverted-L) works best if both ends of the
horizontal section are located away from the house. In your case you can
make the far end of the antenna at the wash line pole the feed end with
the vertical wire to the balun near the ground. Instead of having the
near end come all the way to the mast on the house, shorten it about
20-ft and install an insulator at that end with some nylon rope to the
mast. This will keep the near end of the antenna away from the house,
where it could pick up noise. The vertical wire at the other end will
make up for shortening the antenna at the house end. It will also help
to receive signals which arrive at the antenna from a low angle to the
horizon.
My antenna is very similar except I installed a 20-ft metal pole on top
of the wooden clothes line pole to make that end higher above ground.
This also makes the vertical wire longer for better reception.

David wrote:
On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 14:32:09 -0600, wrote:

About four years ago,that married Irish woman in Bognor Regis,England
hired a guy to repair a leaky pipe in their toilet.The guy didn't know
anything at all about doing plumbing repair jobs.He tried to solder that
leaky pipe instead of replacing the leaky pipe with a new pipe.I guess
old Tony bought quite a few pints at the pubs over there with the money
they paid him.
cuhulin

http://www.daveswebshop.com/pvagc1.shtml

These come in two styles. The zinc (or aluminium?) style is for indoor,
dry locations. The brass version may be buried in the soil. I'd use an
anti oxidant such as Penetrox or NoAlox on the screws and joint if
burying the connection.

mike