Topband: Bent Beverages, BOGs, and about those gutters...

[Greg Jurrens]

Topband gurus:
I'm a very active lurker here but try to keep quiet so everyone doesn't
know my lack of lowband skills.  This weekend's Field Day has me itching to
get back into lower bands again. ( I had burned up/out doing 26 hamfests a
year hawking 'one of those SDR radio companies'.)

I had to make a fast move to Houston for a job and we ended up in a nice,
but tough HOA-controlled neighborhood.  The SDRs are great for quiet
antennas so now I'm thinking about what to use.  I actually dragged a Pixel
Loop with me around the country for shows and had great RX success.  We
also played with some BOGs.  The trick is figuring out a suitable RF
radiator.

The ground here in Houston is quite 'damp' so I don't know how a
beverage/BOG would fare based on comments on an active thread here.  I also
have 200+' of 6' fence line on my 12K sqft lot I can work with.

Lastly, has anyone done any real modelling with isolated rain gutters for
TX?  It should be pretty straightforward to create NEC models.  My house
has 6 or 7 different runs of metal rain gutter.  One of them is 22' up!
I'm wondering if there might be a chance to find a decent coupling point.
I don't mind sawing and splicing if I can make it stealthy.  I have decent
test tools to measure results.

Thank you for the bandwidth. Any directions you might want to point me in
would be appreciated.

ANY ANTENNA outside is better than EVERY antenna inside.

73,
Greg

-- 
Greg Jurrens - K5GJ