[TowerTalk] trees and verticals

[Jamie WW3S]

don't tell AC0C antennas in an attic wont work....


#1   Antennas inside of an attic are often really poor performers 
precisely because there is enough stuff up there to absorb a lot of the 
RF, although not all of it is wood.  I don't think shingles are all that 
transparent to RF, for example, especially when wet.  Attic antennas do 
enable contacts, of course ... after all, even if only 5% of your 100 
watts is escaping the attic you're no worse off than if you were running 
QRP to a decent antenna.  The problem is that most people using an attic 
antenna don't have anything better to compare it against.  if they did, 
not many of them would be using the attic antenna.  Besides, wood inside 
an attic is almost always bone dry ... people used to make insulators 
out of that stuff.