Transmitting Gutter Antenna

I have a couple of questions for anyone with expertise or experience in using a rain gutter as an antenna.

Transmitting gutter antenna. The antenna from her dining room window my typical luck. Using the terms rain gutter and efficiency are a contridiction. I ve always fed gutter antennas from the bottom of a downspout using a coax pigtail one end with an so 239 uhf connector same as what s on the back of most ham cb radios center of the coax going to the gutter and braid going to a nearby grounding point of some kind either a ground rod worst case scenario radials better or groundrod with radials best option. I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr.

Furthermore antenna tuners placed at the transmitter allow substantial losses in feed lines to be corrected in order to fool a transmitter into working correctly. So i just ran an appropriate length of 18 awg speaker wire inside the plastic downspout and horizontal section sealing the ends with waterproof silicone caulk and attached the antenna segment to the main wire of some rg 8 coax while i connected the. The rain gutter is fairly new about 3 years old. Just refuses to work.

Rain gutters are a compromise at best. Attached the feed line to a downspout and coax shield to grounding. If the transmitters are positioned more than 20 apart it is best to use a multi directional antenna. Most of the original article is still relevant but i have.

A ham friend of mine recently asked me for the details of how i use my rain gutter and downspout as an antenna. Started to think about some alternative stealthy antenna designs. That article found its way into several ham radio publications and newsletters. Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic.

Aluminum and brand new so they probably made contact. 41 countries in 5 hours with 100 watts into a rain gutter. Economics and efficiency are the main objectives. This all aluminum gutter is fed with coax with an unterminated shield at this end shield connected to radio ground at the other to reduce nearby computer hash from inside the house.

Check the black markers on the map and if all of your desired stations are transmitting from the same area or within 20 of each other you can use a uni directional antenna. By jack ciaccia wmøg. However i recommend cw for such installations. 500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice.

This gutter antenna is connected via an upper roof level downspout where no personal contact is possible. Having limited space for wire antennas elected to use one of the house rain gutters for low hf 40 80 160 the gutter is 67 long continuous aluminum. The losses are dissipated through heat or to ground. Well not to put the nice radial system i had recently planted to waste i.

Rain gutter antenna with sg 230. I had great time. And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw. Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb.