[TowerTalk] Inverted L

[doktorij at bellsouth.net]

Hi Eugene,

This sight is worth bookmarking and refering to when it comes to antennas:

http://cebik.com/radio.html

http://www.cebik.com/wire/ltv.html on inverted L shapes.

http://www.cebik.com/fdim/fdim10.pdf

5. One fellow suggested that I should expect to have problems with RFI and
ground loops (ouch!) because my shack is on the 2nd floor. I was worried
enough as it is if I were actually going to be able to create and put up an
antenna like this in the first place. Now I am worried that after all that
trouble, there will still be more hoops to go through to avoid some of this
other nasty stuff. Advice?

I have my shack on the second floor also. The only place I had any RF problems was on 160, and that was mostly due to the major mismatch at the antenna. I could peg my RF sniffer on 160 versus nada on 80 through 10. If you run into a problem on a specific band, try adding a wire to your ground on the back of the rig for that band and just lay it around the baseboard in your shack. MFJ makes a device that provides an artifical ground specifically to deal with RF ground loops. 

Preferably, if possible, you should tie your radio ground directly to your AC mains ground rod. Check your AC outlets to make sure they are wired properly (device to do this is cheap and usually found at your local hardware/electrical shop) and grounded properly. You'd be surprised at how many outlets have issues. This will go a long way to curing  issues before you before you have them ;o)

Do a web search on Inverted L and you'll find more opinions than you may wish to have!

Have fun!
73,
Julius
n2wn