Gutter Loop Antenna

The smartuner should be mounted as close to the feed point of the rain gutter antenna as possible.

Gutter loop antenna.

This required best case and worst caswe models to encompass most house variables. This is the antenna i have been relegated to use for my hf operating. It is the rain gutter along the front of a house. Signal reports on 30 and 40 meters my primary bands have been consistently good.

Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic. Second article on the rain gutter antenna. The best smartuners to use for a rain gutter antenna are the sg 230 sg 231 or the sg 237. 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. I had great time. However i recommend cw for such installations. Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb.

Below is a photo of a simple effective and entirely covert hf antenna. Mine was a mfj travel tuner. 1 top of mast mount 1 riser 1 eight foot jumper wire with clips 1 alpha match. The length of the antenna is somewhat short for 80 meters but performance on that band has been a big surprise.

And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw. 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. Pic courtesy of n6cc website.

The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35. In fact the downspout has now become my main antenna. 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. Running two wires at each end of the house can turn this into a horizontal loop.

500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice. I got this idea about writing about my antenna because i had one once in the condo that worked very well down to about 40 meters. All are waterproofed and have the tuning range to match most rain gutters. I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr.