Gutter Loop Antenna

Second article on the rain gutter antenna.

Gutter loop antenna. Signal reports on 30 and 40 meters my primary bands have been consistently good. First you have to use a tuner. The length of the antenna is somewhat short for 80 meters but performance on that band has been a big surprise. A couple of years ago i had written an article on the use of my rain gutter on my home as my hf antenna.

The rain gutter antenna has a vertical component approximately 25 high and extends horizontally across the roof line for 35. 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. Very simple and the system worked for me. It is the rain gutter along the front of a house.

In fact the downspout has now become my main antenna. The smartuner should be mounted as close to the feed point of the rain gutter antenna as possible. This required best case and worst caswe models to encompass most house variables. 500 hz or narrower cw filter really takes away many noises compare to wider setting of ssb voice.

Mine was a mfj travel tuner. All are waterproofed and have the tuning range to match most rain gutters. 1 two loop heights 2 two house types and 3 several bands. Running two wires at each end of the house can turn this into a horizontal loop.

I did use rain gutter as antenna and water pipe as ground it worked great from 160 mtr to 10 mtr. 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. 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. I had great time.

Pic courtesy of n6cc website. Unlike gregg s gutter antenna the spout and long horizontal section were made from plastic. However i recommend cw for such installations. And weaker signal from such set up can be heard better in cw.

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. It is 80 feet long and off center fed as a windom with a single wire lead in to a tuner. Also less interference is created to neighbour s tv etc from cw than ssb. 1 top of mast mount 1 riser 1 eight foot jumper wire with clips 1 alpha match.