I was renting a house and the backyard was fenced on 3 sides. I worked all 50 states on one frequency, one net. Now I live in senior housing with a courtyard below, and a roof garden above. For Field Day this year, I rolled the cart with my radio, power supply and tuner up to the roof garden. 100 ft of wire and I made some contacts. Was it efficient? Probably not. There's an air conditioning unit up there I probably could have grounded to. Did I have a good time? Why yes, yes I did. Since I'm one floor above the courtyard, no antenna possibility there. I wish I had a permanent antenna that I could use on a daily basis, but any radio time is better than no radio time right?
Talked to a ham multiple times several years ago in NJ. He was on the air all the time using an antenna on his fence. Had a great signal
A metal fence around your property and tie together the segments except at one point to make a low height loop antenna. Using the gutter of the house works too.
" I was renting a house and the backyard was fenced on 3 sides. I worked all 50 states on one frequency, one net." Ahh yes the ' Cheaters Nets " where you don't have to look for your contacts they are handed to you on a platter ! And people say FT8 contacts are not real contacts ! OVER ! OVER !
I am glad to see that my advice is finally beginning to rub off to others around here. ---Lord Stealth 17th Earl of Camouflage Laird of Clan Destine
I visited a fence one time to trade stolen hubcaps for cash. I don't think he would have made a good antenna, he was a short guy with a cigar.
AS A RX ANTENNA... putting a Beverage at fence height is typical, for 160m for example. AS A TX antenna, you probably will be feeding it in such a way that is works for NVIS and only NVIS and the side pattern will be 20-30 dB below the peak gain at the zenith. That means most long haul DX simply will not hear you because the low elevation propagation will be highly attenuated. Of course, the transmission line effect also is in play, beating down your signal with partial phase canecellation, being so close to the ground. BTW the sunspot numbers are now the HIGHEST they have been in --3-- cycles, so expect great prop this Fall!
This all reminds me of a guy I worked years ago using my 160m loop, he had strung wires on a clothes line and was so excited to work Hawaii !! He was workable but nothing I'd write home about , I'm certain my loop did most of the work.
I had an antenna which was installed under an shingle roof. I ran 100 watts with a Yaesu FT 990. I made many contacts for years and it was great on 40 and 20 meters regardless of the weather, Rain, Snow etc. I think it just depends on how badly you want to get on the air, and if you are willing to accept some limitations. Mike WM4MD
Using my novice call of WN3RVN, back in the mid 70’s, I had a CW QSO using my DX-40 and a light bulb “dummy load.”
There was no coax. The light socket was soldered to the coax connector which was plugged directly into the DX-40 antenna port.
In that case the highly unbalanced RF was radiating from your ground connection and possibly the power cord. IOW do NOT ever do that. A light bulb is NOT an antenna. A light bulb should NEVER be used as a dummy load. A light does not have a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms real. A light bulb is a POOR dummy load and should never be used as a dummy load. This is really a poor example to diseminate to new hams, for example. Really...why did you bring this up? It just perpetuates dangerous myths that serve no purpose. You KNOW this may encourgae someone to plug one of those 'bulb' LED arrays into an SO239, and potentially burn out the PA's on the rig, or worse, start a fire.
He spoke of a time when we used tubes instead of transistors. You should never use an incandescent light bulb on a modern radio. HeathKit recommended using a 60-watt light bulb when testing my DX-20 construction. The DX-20 impendence range was between 20 and 1000 ohms, not the required 50 ohms of today's radios.
