Gutter Loop Antenna

A couple of years ago i had written an article on the use of my rain gutter on my home as my hf antenna.

Gutter loop antenna.

1 top of mast mount 1 riser 1 eight foot jumper wire with clips 1 alpha match. However i recommend cw for such installations. The smartuner should be mounted as close to the feed point of the rain gutter antenna as possible. Very simple and the system worked for me.

The best smartuners to use for a rain gutter antenna are the sg 230 sg 231 or the sg 237. The length of the antenna is somewhat short for 80 meters but performance on that band has been a big surprise. Mine was a mfj travel tuner. Running two wires at each end of the house can turn this into a horizontal loop.

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. This required best case and worst caswe models to encompass most house variables. I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr. In fact the downspout has now become my main antenna.

Second article on the rain gutter antenna. 1 two loop heights 2 two house types and 3 several bands. I had great time. This is the antenna i have been relegated to use for my hf operating.

500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice. It is the rain gutter along the front of a house. 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. First you have to use a tuner.

It is 80 feet long and off center fed as a windom with a single wire lead in to 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. Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic. The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35.

All are waterproofed and have the tuning range to match most rain gutters. 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. Signal reports on 30 and 40 meters my primary bands have been consistently good. Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb.