My antenna situation in June 2020
We moved into another house and my antenna situation changed a lot!
I cannot put up a high antenna here but a long(er) wire antenna is not a problem. Next to this I set up a 2m / 70cm / 6m stick antenna to have at least a minimal presence on these bands.
My main antenna is now a 23 meter long HyEndFed wire antenna that can handle 400 watt, which is the legal limit for my Full license here in The Netherlands.
I’m still trying it out so I have no opinion yet on this antenna.
I did make QSO’s with Mauritius and the USA which at least shows it’s not a big dummy load! 😉
The company that makes this antenna makes pretty good antennas so I’m sure it will work out good.
The antenna starting point.
I stuck the antenna to the side of the house. As you can see, I added a MFJ line isolator close to the antenna plug to reduce any RFI. It’s the little white stick on the bottom of the pole.
My antenna situation in June 2016
At the moment I cannot put up a big antenna so I’m using some compromise antennas. The most important ones are two or actually three dipoles in the attic.
Why am I not sure about the number? Well, 2 of them are put into one to make a fan dipole (also called a butterfly dipole). This fan dipole is for the 10 meter band and the 20 meter band.
It works perfectly; it’s resonant (1:1.1 all over the bands) and very effective. My record is 16000 km (almost 10000 miles) on the 20 meter band (Melbourne Australia) and 12500 km (almost 8000 miles) on the 10 meter band (Argentina) both with 100 watt power. So it probably doesn’t compare with a Yagi but for indoor dipoles it’s not bad!
My third (or second) dipole is an inverted V for the 15 meter band.
For 2 meters and 70 centimeters I have a Diamond X30 antenna, also high in the attic.
Next to this I have a few QRP, mobile and handset antennas and a homebrew 70 cm Quad (read my blog about this).
Some pictures of my dipoles
The one in the back is the fan dipole (10m and 20m) and the inverted is the 15 meter band dipole.
Because of the length of the antennas it isn’t possible to put the whole picture here, but you get the idea right?!
Some pictures of the ATAS 120A antenna I had installed:
I removed this antenna because I have better antennas at the moment.
The Atas I am still using in mobile and portable operations. I’m leaving the images here as reference.
Another antenna I had: the MFJ-1786x Magnetic Loop Antenna
The unboxing:
Opening the thing up. Doing extra quality control! 😉