Yesterday, a reader asked:
I am studying your “No Nonsense” book as I prep for the Technician test. I am also learning CW. I am going to buy a Yaesu FT 450D as my first radio, and I want to use an indoor antenna as my first antenna. What do you recommend for CW?
I replied:
To be honest, I’ve never had a lot of luck with indoor antennas. Don’t let that dissuade you, though. I have worked many hams with indoor antennas. Just recently, for example, I worked a guy who was using a Buddipole inside his apartment.
If you have an attic, you could easily install a dipole up there. The ARRL web page on indoor antennas notes:
Attics are great locations for indoor antennas. For example, you can install a wire dipole in almost any attic space. Don’t worry if you lack the room to run the dipole in a straight line. Bend the wires as much as necessary to make the dipole fit into the available space.
….
Ladder-line fed dipoles are ideal for attic use—assuming that you can route the ladder line to your radio without too much metal contact. In the case of the ladder-line dipole, just make it as long as possible and stuff it into your attic any way you can. Let your antenna tuner worry about getting the best SWR out of this system
There are plenty of remote tuners now, too. You could install a doublet with elements as long as you can make them, connect them directly to the remote tuner, and then run coax to your shack.
I have also worked guys who have used Slinky antennas inside a house. The advantage of using a Slinky is that it is electrically longer than a wire of the same length.
An attached garage might also make a good location for an indoor antenna. VE3SO, who I’ve worked several times, uses a magnetic loop antenna installed in his garage.
If you do a web search for “indoor amateur radio antennas,” you’ll get many more ideas. Here are a few that looked promising to me:
Another option might be to load up your gutters! I’ve worked a couple of guy who use gutter antennas, including WA8KOQ and K3DY.
Keep me in the loop (pun intended). I’d love to hear how you make out.
If you’ve used an indoor antenna, and have some advice for this guy, please feel free to chime in below.
K2MUN says
For many years I’ve used an attic mounted off-center fed 40 meter dipole. With an automatic antenna tunner and a 4:1 balun I’ve worked lots of dx with both qrp and, more easily, 100 watts!
Certainly, outdoors is much superior but an attic is a nice location in bad weather making playing with your antenna a pleasure :-).
David says
I use a hombrew magloop have worked from Northern MI all the way to TX on less then 20W CW. It can handle up to 60w CW. It was very easy to build and the only pricey part was the Air cap I paid about 90$. If he goes the mag-loop route the Air cap will need to handle 4KV for 100W at 40m. Total cost for my build with 2 different loops was about 150$. I use a single loop for 40-15m and a dual loop for 80/40m. I use it only indoors and have had a great time with it.
Here is some reading for him: https://www.nonstopsystems.com/radio/frank_radio_antenna_magloop.htm
I have also used a Isotron 40m in the attic with much success.
73
David
N8DAH
Stan says
Certainly indoor antennas and especially attic antennas can be effective. I know of one individual who even modified a hexbeam to fit in his attic. Two problems here in Texas with attic antennas though are that most new construction requires radiant barrier (can you say Faraday cage?) and it’s common to put the HVAC system in the attic. A friend of mine was running 100 watts into an attic dipole and fried the control board on his system.
You can certainly make indoor antennas work but they definitely take some planning and experimentation. Also be cognizant of RF exposure limits.
73,
Stan
NW5Q
John, KD0JPE says
If you have an attic available, check out the following 6-band coax trap-based antenna:
http://degood.org/coaxtrap/
I constructed one of these 9 years ago and have had great results with it.
KD0JPE
Al LaPlaca says
For the past six years I’ve used indoor antennas on 8 bands (40M through 6M) with far better than expected results; all 50 states, 142 countries on HF and on 6M 37 states and 21 countries.
On HF the antennas are mini-dipoles made up of pairs of hamsticks end-to-end to form dipoles. On 6M I use a Moxon beam. All antennas are from MFJ and max height is 7 feet above ground level.
Don’t let anyone tell you indoor antennas don’t work!
viper says
I use a wolf river coil with a 78″ whip inside of a apartment with no ground radials installed the antenna works on 10-80 meters and i make a lot of contacts on the coil the average swr is about 1.1-2.0 but it does tune on every band.