OBSERVATIONS FROM SCOTLAND

How often do you hear or read about radio-amateurs giving up because they have moved to a home with a postage stamp garden, or worse still, no garden at all? It's very sad of course, and we'd all like to have huge back gardens (preferably tended by someone else.... LA2QAA), but the reality is that more and more of us live in houses that more or less resemble large brick-built (talk for yourself, mine's made of wood.... LA2QAA) rabbit hutches. The question of course arises of how to fit radio aerials into such physically small spaces.

At 'Copland Mansions', the aerials are indeed very modest, at least from the outside. Apart from a solitary pair of skyward pointing fibreglass fishing-poles, you'd hardly know that I had lots of aerials in use. Just so you know, I live on a street corner, so I have a large and completely useless front garden while at the rear of the house is a pitifully small 'half-a-postage-stamp'. Nonetheless, I have plenty of aerials in use.

1)Inductively shortened 20/80M dipole.	attic
2) Multi-band HF magnetic loop	attic
3) 2M ZL Special Yagi on an azimuth rotator (fixed elevation)	attic
4) 70Cms quagi on azimuth rotator (fixed elevation)K5OE Quagi	attic
5) Broadband Discone	attic
6) 2m Band J-pole (on rear wall bracket)	outdoors
6A) TV Yagi on rear-wall bracket(OK, that one doesn't count.... LA2QAA)	outdoors
7) end fed wire aerial (back garden)	outdoors
8)Meander Vertical (back Garden) Link to project	outdoors
9) A decent ground system	outdoors

OK, forget the TV aerial for a minute.

I live in a property with a postage stamp back garden, just like many of the people I hear complaining about their 'predicament' yet I manage to fit in no less than 8 (yes EIGHT), aerials for the amateur bands. C'mon guys, quit looking for excuses and start getting inventive! Even the most restricted dwelling can usually still support some amateur radio operation. Unless you have no garden at all, and aerial restrictions PLUS a flat roof, you can probably still get a signal out. Even if you DO happen to live in such an area, a DIY mag-loop made of cheap wire blu-tack'ed to the wall WILL get you out.

Granted you won't compete with the guys on desert islands with 5 ele monobanders but you can still join in. Any aerial is better than none! If I had to mention one single thing that has made the biggest difference to my situation, I've have to say #9. It's not needed for the mag-loop but it DOES make a big difference with the end-fed and the meander aerials. Having a good ground system for any sort of HF operation is a big positive. The electricity mains ground is normally an excellent source of interference and if you want to avoid it, a proper local RF ground will make a huge difference. It certainly did for me.

My ground system consists of several 8 foot ground stakes driven fully into the ground and bonded together by buried wire 'radials' that converge beside my meander vertical. I've also bonded the cast-iron waste water plumbing into the ground system. The grounding braid goes to my upstairs shack by a direct run of RG213 coaxial cable braid which runs straight up and through the shack wall at floor level, ending in a grounding strip that runs along the rear of my desk. The mains ground to the shack is disconnected and the desk is fed from a transformer-isolated single socket with an RCD. This gives a single switched mains supply for the whole shack. The second mains socket in the shack is blanked off for safety.

With the exception of the discone and some parts of the ZL yagi, my aerials are home made. The ZL yagi started it's (long) life as a commercial product but like the guy who's been using the same broom for 50 years, it's had all the elements replaced over the years along with the fixings. Only the dipole centres and boom are original parts :-) I bought the discone because it's quite difficult to drill accurate angled holes in a cone!

Yesterday while admiring our now-seasonal 'monsoon' type rain, I spotted another covert aerial opportunity. In our back garden we have a patio set. You know the kind of thing.... a plastic table with a parasol and 4 chairs. It slowly dawned on me that I had missed yet another valuable opportunity to build a stealth aerial. The table is made of injection-moulded PVC material and has an overhanging 'lip'. It's just a nice size to fit some microbore pipe around the inside edge of the 'lip' with a little box containing a variable capacitor. I doubt if even Sandra would ever notice that if I fit the feed-point with a BNC so there are no trailing cables when it's not in use.

I'm sure if you are a regular reader, you'll know 'exactly' where this train of thought is heading.... Mag-loop! If you do decide to hijack my new aerial idea, just remember to keep your fingers clear of the table edges when transmitting. 5W PEP = 1KV or thereabouts across the capacitor. Best to place your transceiver on a chair nearby!

The point I'm making here is that almost anyone with a little ingenuity CAN get a signal out from a restricted location. Don't lose hope. If I can do it, so can you. Treat problems as opportunities, because they almost always are. While you are at it, campaign against Blue Smarties. Blue is no colour for some something edible! smarties