Antenna creativeness for mobile home dwellers and others

[RnKTapp]

I live in a mobile home park in the middle of town, on a small lot. Couldn't figure out how to get decent reception. Read some tips on the web about a long length of coax strung on the roof or on the ground. IT WORKS.
Here's what you do. Get a long length of coax, as long as space will allow, 50-100 feet if possible (mine is about 50 ft). Take one end of the coax, and solder the shielding and the center wire together. Do this on only One End. The Other end you will use Only the center wire to connect to your antenna terminal. Toss this puppy on top of your mobile home roof, or (they say) even string it across the ground. It is a very low-noise antenna, and does Extremely well for me for reception.

[Brenakie]

RnK

I just picked up one of those "slinky" antennas from eBay and it works very well. It's hanging from my ceiling.

[DUCKMAN]

I, TOO, LIVE IN A MOBILE HOME. I AM CURRENTLY USING A LENGTH OF SPEAKER WIRE. I FIND THAT THE RADIO ANTENNA WORKS JUST ABOUT AS WELL AS THE EXTERIOR WIRE. I USED THE SMALLER WIRE DUE TO NOT KNOWING HOW TO GET A COAX LEAD INTO THE HOME.
ANY FURTHER INFO/ADVICE WOULD BE APPRECIATED.

[NW7US]

I USED THE SMALLER WIRE DUE TO NOT KNOWING HOW TO GET A COAX LEAD INTO THE HOME.

If you are renting, then there are several possible ways you might get a coax conveniently out of the trailer. If you are renting, you probably do not want to drill a coaxial hole through an outside wall. Here are a couple of ideas in this case:

1. If your radio room is next to the water heater bay, you might be able to get the coax out through the panal that allows access to the water heater, and then, out through the bottom of the trailer along a pipe through the pipe opening. From there, you can route the coax out from under the trailer and up into the feedpoint of your loop or dipole, etc.
2. If you have a sliding window of any sort, you can get plexiglass or wood, and cut a section that is as tall as the window, and a few inches wide. Slide the window open those few inches, and insert the plexiglass or wood, then close the window so that everything is sealed and flush. Create a lock so the window can't be opened further. Drill through the plexiglass or wood. Seal everything. My preference would be the plexiglass.
3. If you can drill a hole into an outside wall, then make sure you drill downward as the hole goes outward, so that water won't drip into that hole. Run the coax out through the hole, and seal it. Radio Shack and other TV shops have "wall" conduits that you can insert into these holes to "finish" the hole more completely.

It is also recommended that you get a good ground for your station. Ground wire (the bigger, the better (like, double-O gauge, or a copper strip that's an inch wide, or really big braid)) should be run from your radio out to a single grounding point (use an eight-foot grounding rod, at minimum). The antenna coax braid could and probably should be grounded to the same ground rod.

Grounding will reduce noise, which will give you a better Signal-to-noise ratio. That makes reception more effective. Dipoles are better than random wire, but both are noisy. Loops are more quiet.

A great resource for Antenna projects is found at: http://cebik.com.

Indoor antennas do not work nearly as well as outdoor antennas, if you are in a metal box. You will be missing the weaker stations, and noise will be a greater issue. Overall, using indoor antennas makes for a real challenge. Getting a receiving antenna out and up will make your experience more productive and enjoyable.

[WX9T]

When I was doing work on my M.Mus, I was living in a 21st-floor apartment in a brick and concrete apartment tower. Not the easiest environment for SWL work. However, I was able to keep my R-390A well-fed with a helical and counterpoise. I took about 350-400' of cheap RatShack hookup wire and wound it in a single layer around a form made from a few feet of carpet-roll core. Over this, I wound some black electrical tape to keep things in place and give it something of a decent look. Then I used about 40' of wire snaked around the baseboard of the living room, and connected this to ground to serve as a vague 'ground' by letting it act as a counterpoise-type element. The helical itself sat on the windowsill.

Results were pretty good...typical international broadcasters were a cinch, and I could even copy many of the stronger tropical banders with relatively good strengths and fidelity. Of course, the receiver itself was a big asset there, but even a basic receiver would've benefitted from this. I recently pulled the old helical out of storage to A-B it against my current vertical wire antenna which I use for both receive and transmit, and the results were pretty good...only about an S-unit of difference (with the vertical coming out on top) as measured on my NRD-515, and I'm sure the performance could have been tweaked out a bit better had I connected the helical to the antenna tuner.

Of course, this was useless for transmitting back then, so while I was living in the apartment it was pretty much the HT or nothing...no more CW fun on HF with something like that. I don't really want to think of what it would've been like to load that up; voltages on short helicals like that tend to be pretty outrageous, and the RFI to other nearby tenants would've also likely been pretty ugly with that and the counterpoise for operating. Not to mention what sort of frankenstein tuner would've been necessary to even load the thing up!