|
Will metal gutters work as an antenna if I use an antenna tuner with them, or am I better off throwing a spool of wire out my second floor window? |
|
Should work, but several possible issues. The gutter needs to be floating from ground, or grounded far away. Check where downspouts are. Another problem is the roof flashing (drip edge, etc.), it might be connected with nail holes even though it's painted, or coupled capacitively, and it might go places the gutter doesn't. The issue I would be most worried about is intermittent connections - gutter connections are not made to be reliable electrically. Might be different antenna at different times/temperatures, maybe even noisy. Of course, it's fun to just hook up to something metal and see how it works. You might get lucky. Or you could go to the trouble of isolating two sections to make a nice dipole, keeping it away from the roof drip edge and fascia aluminum, etc. Probably a real pain to do that on most houses, but maybe easy in some cases. Might work better than throwing a wire out. -Dan, KW2T |
|
You could possibly make a dipole out of the gutters if you put plastic sections in the middle and at the appropriate lengths. Also make sure that the sections of the gutter that you will be using have no corners on them. But you definitely will need that tuner. |
|
I've been told that an operator here did in fact put in the plastic isolator and used his gutters as an antenna. Wonder if you could get fancy and rig up a folded dipole or a rhombic.... |
