My antenna restrictions

No success indoors with the loop

I have now retired and we sold our condo in the Toronto concrete jungle and moved to New Brunswick on the East coast. We are on the outskirts of Moncton and I am finally able to have an outdoor antenna! The property we have is not huge so I purchased an Endfed antenna from Ulitmax antennas. Having an outdoor antenna is great considering the antennas listed below were very much a compromise. Living on the East coast has brought me great DX into Europe something I never had in Ontario. 

Below is my former QTH's but I chose to keep it on the blog as many other hams have similar limitations and I hope the info below can help

We moved to the big city…..Toronto….and to a condo apt! The challenge has increased I no longer have the use of an attic here it's a concrete and reinforcing bar all around me. I tried some indoor antenna operating using my Alexloop but it was a no-win situation. No matter where the loop was situated I was just not getting out. I then put the loop on the balcony in the vertical position and for some reason that netted me zero contacts as well. I then tried the loop in the horizontal position and for the first time, I was spotted on the Reverse Beacon network. This told me that the balcony is going to do the trick I did not want to use the Alexloop as it required me to go out and manually adjust the loop for band and minor frequency changes. In the winter months that was not ideal. So the hunt started for the balcony antenna, it had to be stealth (as condo rules do not favour antennas), multi-band with adjustments from indoors and able to handle cold winters without troubles.  The choice ended up being the MFJ 1788 loop antenna this antenna covers 15 to 40m. At this point, the antenna is on order so it's the Alexloop.

Living in a condo has its challenges and opportunities for ham radio. I have often read about fellow hams living in restrictive antenna neighbourhoods, it seems to be more commonplace now than in the past. In the past, it only affected amateurs who either lived in apartments or those who were in townhouses. Now we are all to familiar with new housing developments and how antennas of any type are prohibited. Now and then you read about legal action taken against radio amateurs regarding antennas and or towers. In which legal costs can skyrocket in a very short time. There are no guarantees in the end that your tower and or antenna will be allowed to stay up. Here is a pick of my state-of-the-art cutting-edge world class antenna farm.

20 Meter dipole

40-meter mobile whip dipole

The 20-meter dipole in the attic I run 5 watts into this antenna and have had great success with it. I also have made dipoles out of mobile whip antennas this allows me to get the lower bands into an attic installation. At the moment I am planning to install an Alpha Delta DX-EE. This will allow me to remove the dipoles allowing me some room for VHF/UHF antennas as well as 6m.



WELL THE ALPHA DELTA DX-EE IS UP AND RUNNING !!

Weaving around the attic

Using electric fence standoff's

Ready to go