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Indoor Attic Antennas -- Always Surprise Me!

I have been an active, albeit casual HAM for 15 years. By casual I mean I spend more time in the Fall/Winter DX'ing and Contesting then the rest of the year due to my sport fishing disease. I have confirmed 202 Countries, have DXCC (and on 3 bands, just need 8 more for 40 meters) and when my wife and kids let me, I can work hundreds of stations in many contests with stations worldwide on numerous modes.

In this time I have played with more wire antenna designs than you can imagine all with the limitation of no real trees or other supports available. The G5RV-Jr (52 foot flat-top) can be quite an effective radiator for 10-40 meters and I have used that and other commercial antenna's as well (Cushcraft R5 for example). All under less then ideal land conditions. They have been strung from my house to ground stakes, buried in tree's only 25 feet high and strung in attics, all bent back on themselves and curved to fit the small space available.

In all this fun of experimentation for us who cant have towers and big beams, I have come to a conclusion that although outside antenna's are nice, my attic dipoles do just as good a job, and don't pick up too much additional electrical noise to warrant me changing them. Now if I had 2-100ft. tall pine tree's on 2 acres of land I would have a full size Carolina Windom up there in a minute, but I don't and having an R5 in the backyard or stringing the shorty G5RV up 25 feet in the backyard does not improve over my attic fan dipole, much to my surprice once again this weekend.

I have a 15/20 meter coax fed fan dipole in the attic which performs well, in fact I took the R5 down since it was perhaps annoying to the neighbors, was a lightning hazard and did not do any better then my attic antenna. I took my G5RV from the attic and made a 25 ft. tall mast out of 2x4's last Fall, 03 and strung it in my backyard. Iworked alot but it never blew my ears away vs. when it was in my attic. I had the left over wire still in the attic for the G5RV, just soldered them to my existing dipole, and with my rig's tuner I had a 40 meter dipole (only 52 feet long and taking multiple bends in the attic). On top of that my HVAC is in the attic and that must add some nice lobes to my radiated patterns! During the CQWW RTTY this past weekend I worked stations throughout EU into Russia, Greece and SA as wel, all on 40 meters and 100 watts. I just keep getting surprised on how well these antenna's can be for working all the bands, not just 10-20 meters.

Bottom line if you live in a community where antennas are frowned upon (amazing such a thing could exist!) then don't give up hope on making solid DX QSO's. Use your attic and you will be just as surprised as me how effective they can be. Don't worry about wire being in straight lines, make what bends you have too to make the length of wire fit, use good coax, a balun and proper safety and you will work the world.

73

N2LK