In August 2013 I moved into a nice neighborhood that has a nice yard with very few objects to mow around. I decided that it would probably be a good idea not to put up my two sections of Rohn 25. This decision was based on two factors:
- I didn’t want to mow around it.
- I didn’t want my neighbors to freak out.
With that in mind, I gave my tower sections to a ham friend, Andy. Now, I’m left with a dilemma. I don’t have any way of communicating from my new garage ham-shack using my ham radios! After a little brainstorming and exploring the weird attic space, I decided that I could mount my Arrow 146-4 Yagi in the attic! I ran 50 feet of LMR-400 to a junction box that I built using an aluminum box and two SO-239 jacks. From there, I used another length of random coax to run the final length to the antenna. I secured it to some 2×4 wood pointing North. North just happens to be the higher population of wanted repeaters. It works towards the South fairly well, too. I’m sure that the East-West performance of the antenna is as expected (null?).
While I was in the attic, I also rescued my 10m dipole. It didn’t fair so well amongst the Ethernet, power, and phone cables running up there. I had S9 noise and birdies scattered all over the 10m band. This solution is for another post to follow. Check back as I’ll show you next how I get on HF without ticking the neighbors off with huge, permanent antennas.