Antennas are Ugly or how to add value to your neighbourhood by being a radio amateur with a boat or a flagpole on your property. Foundations of Amateur Radio is a weekly podcast about the 1000 hobbies that HAM radio represents. You can hear it on-line, on-air or get your own copy on-demand from the website at http://podcasts.itmaze.com.au/ If you prefer, you can subscribe via your favourite podcast tool by searching for my callsign VK6FLAB on iTunes.
As a person with training in science and engineering I think antennas are beautiful and fascinating. For the enlightened, one can see the mathematical perfection in their design both electrically, structurally and even aerodynamically. I like antennas and often stop to gaze upon them and admire the thought and ingenuity that has gone into their creation and I imagine the purpose they serve in communications.
VA7MM: Humph... While I am an engineer, and can relate to all your words and thoughts above, my neighbors use a lot fewer intelligent words when looking at my antenna's, and they seem to carry torches.... Neal
The problem with the title of this thread and the premise of adding value to a property while saying antenna's are ugly is an obvious attempt to say that if you have an antenna up it lowers the value of the property and adjoining property. This has been debunked with facts. Show me one instance with facts of where a ham antenna has lowered the value of adjoining properties.
.....says the guy with HAM in his profile picture....?? With so much unnecessary capitalisation and so many grammatical errors on his own profile write-up, one would wonder why a D.J. aka Disc Jockey or Deejay as our scribe puts it, would throw stones inside his own glass house!! I also think that antenna's are a thing of beauty and fascination... to a point... one can be impressed by the sheer immensity of some HAM antenna setups, but sometimes a boat with a tall mast in the back garden can navigate around the covenants placed upon many of us. Thanks for link Onno.
Book title's are often all caps on the cover. But why capitalize ham radio in a sentence, unless HAM is an acronym? During my deejay days, my Aunt Ethelyn (the book author) would often be on the phone to correct my pronounciation, which I rightly appreciated. So if you have any corrections to my bio page to offer, please fell free--I won't be offended.
Antennas are ugly? Well let's have a little think on this subject as it seems to be the in thing at the moment. Were they ugly when we all had large arrays in our backyards to receive television in Australia for so many years? Country towns had more of the ugly brutes sticking up than you could imagine but it was a necessity so it was classed as normal. Without the big ugly brutes being available no radio or TV would have been received in most areas. Even today houses are adorned by the good old outside antenna as rabbit ears on the TV are not really efficient are they. Now we have to get serious here and push to have all the new phone towers lowered and mounted on boats or flagpoles so all the ugliness is gone. What would we have left? Gee I know it's just come to me, no radio, no TV, no mobile phones etc etc but that would be good as people might see the need for communication skills again. As for the other topic on using the bed springs, tape measures etc as antennas I commend their efforts in the experimentation field but not one signal would have been heard without the operator on the other end having a well built ugly antenna or favourable propagation. Try watching TV with the kitchen fork or spoon as the antenna, not real good is it? So the solution now is all phone, radio, TV towers to be gone by Easter as has happened to the antennas erected by responsible radio hams around the world and life would be so much quieter without the added noise created by these ugly things. Cheers.
My point Jim, was that your comment was entirely unnecessary in light of the obvious.. it was just a dig for the sake of it!.. and I for one get fed up reading through all the 'flaming' on the forums to actually get to the comments that are relevant... the thread was an Ozzy F-call station pointing fellow hams to a podcast concerning antennas, not a grammar test. Keep it real. 73
No offense intended. Having been a ham since 1954, to see it in all caps just sticks out like a sore thumb. And it's becoming more and more ubuquitious. So my intent was not as a dig, but as a gentle reminder that the "ham" in ham radio is not an acronym. (If there's an error in my speil here, it's owing to my spellcheck, for some reason, having ceased to put that squiggly red line beneath my misspellings.)
Antenna Porn as they say I have to say while I was reviewing the Armando Martins Campaign - of all the excuses M0PAMs neighbours gave I couldn't find one which held water. In terms of Ugly beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what I saw was a pretty well hidden, and well engineered solution which the manufacturer would no doubt be proud of and aggrieved to hear called ugly. My wife hates them after my neighbour stirred up so much trouble we've had the police around at least thirty five times since it went up. I begin to think the word "radio amateur" don't sit well with folks. G4IYK said that.
I begin to think the word "radio amateur" don't sit well with folks. G4IYK said that.[/QUOTE] One day the people that bad mouth our ugly installations will perhaps see the actual good we have done for the world or their country. I can remember cyclone Tracy, bushfires and floods all over my country and when all else failed they had to ask us ham aliens for help. 73 VK6NO
