Thinking of going horizontal

Have been up most of the night reading and thinking, thankfully not reading thinking and drinking. Since there seem to be no local contacts that I can reach, am going to try horizontal tomorrow, hopefully that might help clear some of my QRM. Wish me luck as will be balanced on a stepladder trying to lay my 5/8 down flat in the loft, a gammy leg won't be much help but think I can manage. Will report back once the mission is accomplished.

Dipole centre of the bay or some ware £6? 2 bits of wire and you will soon have an 11m dipole.
Very easy to make and will work a lot better than your 5/8 laying down.
Loads of info on the net.

Hi Mark,

I'm not certain your vertical 5/8ths is going to work all that well laying down and there'll be those that argue about 'take off angles' and such regards a dipole arrangement. There's bound to be someone along anytime soon ready to 'verse' you in antenna theory.

(If you've ever seen the Galapagos documentary by Attenborough you'll know what I mean.....you the newly hatched Iguana in a bed of barren sand lusting for the ocean with the sound of predatory snakes amongst the outlying rocks.......Antennasssssssss?  )


Alan's suggestion of a typical dipole is a great idea and worthy of experimentation. 
(After all, a wet finger placed at the antenna socket of your radio will pick up strong signals......just don't transmit into it!!)

There's a good construction write up here :-

https://fldx.org/site/dipole.php

You'd be surprised of how much you can bend a dipole to fit in a space especially if you only bend the ends. A dipole will pretty much work well regardless unless you screw it up into a wire ball.

With the cheapness of bits of wire and the simplicity of hooking up such an arrangement it might be worth a play. Oh there'll be those that suggest antennas don't work well in attics/lofts and even throw in the odd choke/balun suggestion too just to be 'helpful'. Always worth having a play yourself and seeing if you can fulfill your own requirements or space available....you can learn a lot from the experience too.


I wish you well and more importantly have fun.  

All the best,
Victor

Horizontal didn't work out, as predicted by both Victor and Alan. I don't know what happened as am now getting 2-3 pound of noise and hearing loads of continental users. It didn't work out as expected but moving the antenna back to its original position seems to have done the trick, not perfect yet a lot better than before, 27.4650 is very busy for me with many on the frequency. The only thing that has changed is the antenna has possibly gone up a little straighter this time.

Hi Mark,

Don't presume all horizontals won't work just because your 5/8ths didn't pan out as expected. A 'balanced' dipole is quite a different kettle of fish.

Also remember that propagation alters from day to day and often from second to second(!) One day you could have nothing, also nothing but noise, good signals with huge noise and the elusive we're all after great signals with very little noise.

But, always worth having a play and never stop experimenting with radio even if you revisit subjects/problems just-in-case. (I must've built my Z-Match ATU several times before I realised there was no difference in any of them. Then I went back to my original Pi-Match! )

We've had a bit of mid-winter lift on the upper HF bands recently albeit a bit up and down so I hope you get to enjoy some of it now that your antenna is back in it's vertical position.


All the best,
Victor

Short of time, luckily for you Mark lol, otherwise I'd probably do a long unnecessary post on the subject. So I'll just say.. happy you made an improvement even if you don't why it's got better. Keep up the playing around and trying new things, it's a fun part of radio.. for me anyways.

Do put calls out too, even if you don't hear anything, you might be surprised. When I was a kid I had what was effectively a 1/2 wave silver rod laid down in my Dad's loft for a bit with an SWR of nearly 3 and someone from Sweden came back to me on my first call even though the band appeared dead before I did. That really surprised me and was thrilling and I am sure you'll experience the same soon. Have fun.

I read this one with interest and thought I'd throw in my 2 cents worth.  Yes, vertically polarized will be noisier than horizontal, but as a few others here predicted, you don't want to lay your vertical on its side as that probably won't work out too well.  The orientation depends some on what you are trying or wanting to do.  Here in the US and I'd assume across the pond as well, most (but not all) 11 meter stations here are vertically polarized.  If you are vertical as well it will increase your odds of making more local contacts as you can hear them better and they can hear you better because of the same polarization.  On the other hand, if you're vertical and another local station is horizontal, they will still hear you and you will hear them, but just not as well and I'd venture to guess between the two of you the signal strength loss would be around 4 S units.  When it comes to long distance contacts then both horizontal and vertical polarization are good choices as the effects of being horizontal or vertical become less of a factor, but again vertical will produce more noise.  I've made contacts 1500+ miles away, me being horizontal and the other station being vertical and we heard each other just fine. Overall horizontal will again be more quiet, but may not be the best choice for local contacts.  I recently had the chance to test with a local station 30 miles away from me, he has a Maco beam antenna he can switch back and forth between horizontal and vertical polarization and once he matched my horizontal polarization the signals on both ends jumped considerably, he went from an S7 to a 10 over S9 and he was reporting the same on his end.  So, here's an idea, how about 2 antennas, one horizontal and one vertical and employ a simple antenna switch between the 2?  Depending on conditions and the situation you then have all the bases covered, and as someone else here posted, it is very easy and inexpensive to build and set up an 11 meter dipole, in fact if I were to do that I'd probably set it up as an inverted V.    

73

Marc