HAM LIFE IN AN HOA
Some of us in a manner of speaking are on our way up or on
our way down in the Ham station world, I
am on my way down (yikes). Well my point is you may live in an HOA as your first
home or in aging ham operator world your last home or as I prefer your retirement
house may be in an HOA like mine.
I want to stress the fact that no one twisted my arm to sign
the CC&Rs for my new home and I do not expect a free pass of some sort, If
the parity act should pass that would be nice but it would change my station
very little I believe I have reasonable accommodations now . My thought was I
am a Ham Radio Operator, I have been doing this a while(40 years) and I will in
the words of Clint Eastwood, improvise, overcome , and adapt no problem, hummm.
I left behind intermediate station locations meaning I had a
tower with a modest beam at 50ft and full size wires dipoles for 40 and 80 and
a KW if needed ( I never operated 160m until I moved to the HOA…It can be done).
I just want to stress that many of us now live in these
conditions and I want you all that do to press on don’t let your great hobby
fall to the weigh side, it need not. Just keep swimming! And for you that don’t give us a break, I was
asked at a club meeting by a guy ( I was the new guy there) What are you stupid
moving into an HOA….Needless to say I was offended and did not return to the
club meetings.
We are not stupid, it is the norm these days it is where a
great many people live, for work good schools or retirement. What ever your
case is we are not stupid just living our lives the best we can in nice
neighborhoods.
So let’s talk Ham Radio now station setup, antennas, DXing,
contesting all the fun stuff. So now you know now I retired moved to a new town
got a new house and live in the HOA world. After the needs of the XYL the move
the paint the yard bla bla….I could not wait to get the station setup, I truly
had no idea what would take place in the yard but I knew what the station would
look like….just like it always looked.
Remember I am the new guy in the neighborhood, no fast moves
so my first attempt before winter set in was a fan dipole in the attic 6-20m
that would get me on the air, also 220 feet of wire @ 6ft off the ground on the
inside of my wooden fence fed with a 9 to 1 UnUn…..That worked great for the
local stuff on the low bands but not much past 1500 miles. That was the first
winter, but my wheels were turning for the next spring.
The problem with attic antennas …..there are a few, let’s
see 10m sets off smoke alarms, 20m inflates and deflates sleep number bed…..one
to avoid when XYL is trying to sleep ! At this point I will say that this was
100w, not the KW which resides now with a ham friend in rural Oregon. I learned
to work around most of the problems for the winter but knew I had to get some
antennas out and up to solve some of these problems….don’t give up keep
swimming !
The very old but good idea of the 4 or 5 BTV in a flagpole
came to mind, so in April of 2011 ( I own two such antennas ) I covered a 4 BTV
in PVC pipe painted it the same color as my house and installed it pre dawn
with old glory atop with a hand full of radials thrown out among the ground
cover. It was a good spring , the
antenna worked great and five years later is still working great giving me
FT5ZM, and many more great DX contacts. Remember almost nobody will mess with
old glory and I love flying her….My thoughts started to drift to the low bands,
I had 40 on the vertical but…when you insert a 4BTV in a PVC pipe you have to
remove the 40m top hat….so it is not the best match, and here is where I will
state that a good antenna tuner or tuners in my case is very important for the
HOA Ham to make the improvised antenna do what you want. Most new rigs have
built in tuners and most are very good, but some may not have the range needed
to do what we ask them to do.
My station is a mix of older and newer equipment, I have two
rigs with built in tuners my old trusty Kenwood TS-940s that will tune about
anything I throw at it, and a newer Yaesu FT-950 that I am sorry to say just
does not have the range I would like….Enter the LDG auto tuners which have a
great tuning range and are not going to break your bank. I use them on my
FT-897s they are great.
Ok now HOA Ham is on 10-40 and the smoke alarm and sleep
number bed are not operating on RF !
Enter a better 40m, 80m and 160 antenna …..well as best as
we can do. From the North end of my house to the highest tree on the South side
of my house is about 75ft….so that is what I have to work with for 40, 80, and
160 not so hot but all I got! I found some very small but strong #20 wire that
I decided to feed with the 9 to 1 UnUn with a remote switch adding some
inductance for 160m.
This wire is only about 4ft above the roof of my house but
it is nearly invisible, you would never see it if you did not know it was
there. And it works very well for what it is.
Let’s move on to VHF and UHF, these are the easy ones, well
sorta! I am not much of a 2m repeater guy but I do believe in EMCOM and support
of local ARES/RACES units so I kept that in mind when installing antennas. My
2m FM antenna is installed on the North side of my house below the roof line
and painted the same color as the house, it works well for all the local
repeaters and simplex out to about ten
miles.
I have not revealed my love of 6m, I have been on 6m off and
on for many years and I could not pass on an E skip season so it was important
to me to get something up for 6 other than the 6m dipole in the attic. The
second summer I was here I got my 3el 6m beam out, I painted it OD green put it
up at about 12ft with a back drop of a huge oak tree in my neighbors yard and
found it was almost invisible…I hand rotated it the first summer and did ok
other than running to the back yard many times….guess that Ham-R-Size !
The next spring I added a 3el 2m beam for SSB, a rotor and
pushed the limits to 15 feet….It is not visible from the street and the other
neighbors would have a hard time seeing it, in the summer it blends nicely with
the oak tree and in the fall/winter it blends with the leafless limbs.
I have placed a few nice contest awards on my walls from my
HOA QTH, not world class scores but I have won my section/class on 160m four
times, VHF once and two DX contests. Retirement is great even from the HOA, I
encourage all of you that live with these restrictions to get to it, employ the
Ham spirit and make it work, I work many Hams in our situation they are having
fun, contesting, DXing, and working new grid squares ….
The Antenna farm or garden as it were !!
The main antenna has to be the trap vertical flagpole , it
works very well 6-40m with a minimum of radials. I just didn’t have room for
many so it has two per band laid in no real order just where I could get them
to fit. I have used this antenna with only a ground rod and no radials with
good results, so just give it a try.
The next antenna that I have gotten many miles out of is my
end fed random wire, although this could be called an end fed half wave (at
about 40m) it works well on 80 and 160 with the setup I have. Don’t expect a miracle
here but expect good results for what it is. I have worked Clipperton Isl. On
80 and 160 with this antenna and K1N on 80 as well. One thing city dwellers
have to deal with is noise and lots of it on the low bands I use a TIMEWAVE ANC-4 to help with the worst times, well worth
the money in my book. And by the way this antenna works superb on 40m that
being closest to a half wave on that band.
I feed the antenna with RG-58 to a 9 to 1 UnUn and switch in
some inductance for 160 it is grounded with a 6ft rod and no counterpoise. My
inductor was trial and error so won’t bore you with any math.
Well let’s move on to the attic. The attic antennas have
fallen in to the backup category now, they work but I prefer the vertical. I made many contacts
on this antenna and the attic is a favorite antenna location for many HOA bound
hams, so don’t overlook this location and I am sure most of you will do a
better job with design than I did. A balun I am sure would be a big help but
this was down and dirty for me to get on the air.
I am sorry but do not have a photo....just a simple fan dipole 6-20 m fed with RG-58.
Okay last but not
least the 6 and 2m antennas. As I stated it seems the OD green paint and the
location has kept me out of trouble with the HOA. This antenna has been up now
for three years and no complaints, not that it couldn’t happen but all is well
so far. The 6m antenna is a Cushcraft 3el and the 2m beam is also a Cushcraft
3el. Not an array to boast about but once again it works well. The best thing
about 6m is it doesn’t take much when
things are cracking…I have worked many new grids near and far and in the past
three years JA, KH6, KL7, EA, and CE….but DE still eludes me for 6m WAS.