Rain Gutter Antenna

Connect to the wire not the gutter.

Rain gutter antenna.

This all aluminum gutter is fed with coax with an unterminated shield at this end shield connected to radio ground at the other to reduce nearby computer hash from inside the house. Mine was a mfj travel tuner. Rain gutter which is about 16 feet long across the front of the house. During wet weather this type of antenna will usually perform very poorly.

I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr. First you have to use a tuner. Rain gutter antennas work better if you use a continuous insulated wire in the gutter or along side it. Low profile antenna for shortwave listening the rain gutter and downspout on the back porch were tried as a random length antenna.

The house is made of brick so the entire system is isolated from ground. And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw. Rain gutter antennas pic courtesy of n6cc website by grey wolf 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. The wood the gutter is mounted to should be dry and of good quality.

500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice. The results have been surprisingly good for shortwave listening using the crane ccradioswshortwave receiver. Over a quarter wavelength for 40 meters and almost a half wave for 30 meters. However i recommend cw for such installations.

Second article on the rain gutter 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. Very simple and the system worked for me. The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35. The feed to the rain gutter is barely visible in these photos as well as the braided connection to the radials.

I had great time. On the sgc website there is a reprint of this article. The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35. Rain gutter hf antenna n6cc com above.

Also feed it up high like a dipole not as a vertical against ground. Rain gutter antennas are a very old form of stealth antenna and can be very effective but there are some other things you must consider if you want to use your gutters. Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb.