Gutter Loop Antenna

In fact the downspout has now become my main antenna.

Gutter loop antenna.

This hoa buster antenna defeats the rules imposed upon amateur ham radio operators by using existing metal gutters as an antenna and enables external tuners to achieve a near perfect match from 10 80 meters. The smartuner should be mounted as close to the feed point of the rain gutter antenna as possible. Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic. All are waterproofed and have the tuning range to match most rain gutters.

A couple of years ago i had written an article on the use of my rain gutter on my home as my hf antenna. I had great time. This required best case and worst caswe models to encompass most house variables. 1 top of mast mount 1 riser 1 eight foot jumper wire with clips 1 alpha match.

It is the rain gutter along the front of a house. Running two wires at each end of the house can turn this into a horizontal loop. First you have to use a tuner. I built variations of this antenna when i lived in several rental homes on hawaii island shortly after getting my novice class amateur radio license back in 1977.

1 two loop heights 2 two house types and 3 several bands. Below is a photo of a simple effective and entirely covert hf antenna. Second article on the rain gutter antenna. However i recommend cw for such installations.

It is 80 feet long and off center fed as a windom with a single wire lead in to a tuner. Very simple and the system worked for me. Signal reports on 30 and 40 meters my primary bands have been consistently good. 500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice.

And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw. I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr. Mine was a mfj travel tuner. Classic rain gutter height loop elevated on standoffs stylized for emphasis to find out i challenged the rain gutter loop with eznec antenna modeling software.

The best smartuners to use for a rain gutter antenna are the sg 230 sg 231 or the sg 237. The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35. The length of the antenna is somewhat short for 80 meters but performance on that band has been a big surprise. This is the antenna i have been relegated to use for my hf operating.