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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!lll-crg!ucdavis!ucbvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-mlokai!mack
From: mack@mlokai.DEC
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Subject: Antenna for the winter
Message-ID: <1570@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Dec-85 09:41:40 EST
Article-I.D.: decwrl.1570
Posted: Tue Dec  3 09:41:40 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 05:26:30 EST
Sender: daemon@decwrl.UUCP
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 35


If I can't get some help, it looks like I'll be off the air for the winter.
Help!

	I live on the second floor of a 3-story building.  The entire second
	floor is my apartment.  The woman I am renting it from lives upstairs.
	I live in the city of Lawrence in a neighborhood with a lot of big
	Victorian houses all practically on top of one another.  Our "yard"
	consists of a 7 foot by 10 foot plot of grass.  The landlady grows
	vegetables in a single row in what was once a flower border next to
	the house.

	The problem.  We moved here in September.  My mother was supposed to
	send me the TA33-Jr that my father had (K1BSB, now silent key), but
	due to shipping costs, she sold it and sent money instead.  This was
	in late October.  We have a 18AVT trap-vertical, but nowhere to put
	radials.  We bought a nice ICOM rig last summer, and would like to be
	able to use it this winter.

	Just as an experiment, in early October, I attached my longest radial
	to my antenna tuner and tried tuning it up.  I started at low power,
	cranked it up a little (about 40 Watts), and got a nice RF burn off
	the control knob.  (Minor problem -- forgot about a ground system.)

	There is a nice place directly below my shack window for a ground rod,
	but its about 15 feet down.  Is that too long for a ground wire?

	Unfortunately, my shack window is fairly close to the place where
	the power comes into the house, so I can't run a dipole around the
	house with the feedpoint at the shack window.

	Does anybody have any good ideas for an antenna for this situation?

						Ralph Mack
						WA1ZCH