If you have been following along with my antenna experiments, you know that I always work with temporary outdoor / field antennas and have been searching for a solution I can make more permanent. It needs to be always available, and frequency resilient.
The idea that I’ve harbored for a long time is a multi-band antenna in the attic. Never mind that certain people don’t want me climbing around in an attic which is likely more complex than the simple one we had “up north.”
The very successful EFHW became the ideal candidate. It performs well, even if its signal strength is about 1/2 an S-unit lower than my best verticals. I remade the original with heavier, more durable, wire and field tested it several days. Like the original, it performed well, with no need of a tuner, on 40M, 20M, 15m, and 10m. All I needed was someone to hang it in the attic.
After a good bit of searching, a good guy known as “The Village Tinker” suggested a certain “low voltage” installation firm (cable TV, ethernet, etc. ) They agreed to do it for the simple price of a one hour service call. A couple of guys came out and I described what I wanted, emphasizing that as high as possible was my desire. I handed them the antenna, complete with the 49:1 transformer in a box, and a simple center hanger that I had been using outdoors. They had the job done in about an hour and we exchanged a check for a receipt.
Results: the 4 band antenna that needed no tuner is now a 4 band antenna that needs a tuner for 3 of those bands, doesn’t hear very well, and has an S-5 noise floor! Sigh!!! I have made a few QSOs with it. The signal reports are lower than with other antennas, and the noise, apparently from other things running through the attic, makes it uncomfortable for listening and decoding CW. It certainly will not be an everyday antenna, maybe an alternative on rainy days.
What happened? I asked one of the installers to show me, on a overhead picture of the house, where the antenna ended up. It wasn’t as high as I expected, nor did it run quite as I expected. By that time, we were out of service call time, and I didn’t ask that he go change anything. What had really happened? He put the center hanger, a simple little plastic triangle with a few holes, as high as he could (not very)… when he came to it … If were installing it, I would have scooted the hanger along until I could get it up to the peak of the roof line. Because he didn’t use some of the distance going up, he had more wire left at the far end, and simply routed it around a corner. The antenna is not the inverted vee I wanted, but a bent horizontal that’s not very high. That speaks to the “doesn’t hear well” aspect. The difference in resonance points and in ambient noise floor is most likely due to the nearness of all the other kinds of wires and ducts in the attic space.
Should I ask for another service call to relocate it up to the top of the roof line? With the unpleasantly high noise floor, I think not.
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