Stealth Antennas
When I was much younger someone told me about modern cave and cliff dwellers and how their numbers were exponentially increasing.To be honest I wasn't sure what he meant and then he explained the cliff dwellers had balconies and the cave dwellers had none. They had no means of erecting an antenna to have a way to utilize their hobby most effectively. Now, there are so many communities who have set forth rules against structures that are not part of the original home, like antennas, etc. that a good operator must become innovative in order to keep his hobby active. From that moment on I thought of these locations as challenges for serious Ham's to overcome.There is no form to the following paragraphs, but thoughts that entered my mind during the night or even while I was operating.
There can never be enough said about the importance of a good earth ground. It is in addition to any grounding you have for your equipment. The most efficient antenna is one that is worked against earth. Of course, depending on who you ask, and whether they are purists, most will point out that an antenna must meet the laws of physics. In any conversation about antennas on any given day you will hear opposing viewpoints. Every can and seems to have an opinion. Let me give you a recent situation:
I had taken down my station and then put it back together, I tried calling CQ on CW, then PSK and finally voice, on 80, 75, 40, 20 and 6 meters. No contacts. I checked out the system and tried once more. That night I got up again and sat looking at it. Ah-ha I found my problem, I was not connected to ground. Within 5 minutes after hooking it back up I called CQ and had 3 answers. So, I proved it to myself. My ground is on a water pipe near our washing machine and runs hidden from view via a very circuitous route. The other proof also came from our condominium. We have horrible city water that forces many of us and our neighbors to purchase water from the local vendor. A plumber came in and cut the water line to install a filter. He mated his plastic pipes to our copper thereby breaking the continuity of ground to the street. I fixed that one by putting a jumper across the filter with #10 copper wire and had major improvements in my signal reports.
I've pretty much broken all of the rules on antenna layout. The best advice I can give anyone else is that if you have sufficient space to run an antenna as it is designed, then do so, if not, knowing that there will be sacrifices do what you can and on any intersecting angle make it a minimum of 45 degrees. I find that a good dipole can be arranged to resemble a rectangle with the feed point and ends 180 degrees opposite from each other. It has almost the same characteristics as a loop. The greatest benefit over a dipole is that it is totally non directional.
