Hello SOTA,
I wanted to share my current operating conditions in order to potentially help others. The past few years since becoming licensed I’ve had the luxury of owning a home with no HOA restrictions. Found my groove with the simplicity of a quality 100 watt rig and dipole. No space restriction, no RFI, and no whiny neighbors.
This year my wife and I relocated to Alaska (for the second time, long story). We occupy a small condo on the first floor of a condo in downtown Anchorage. To make it even better my office window faces a small hill creating a crater of sorts. Random RFI is disbursed throughout the area from the electronic lifestyle of downtown.
My first idea was to wait until dark and run the balun to my end-fed out the window. I put some fishing string in a nearby tree with a small weight and kept it concealed so getting a sloper configuration would be quick and efficient. The wire picked up a solid 10+ S9 of interference on 40M during the night. The transmit was 100 watts and did pretty well creating spots on grid tracker throughout the northern hemisphere as expected. The receive left something to be desired. I continued making contacts this way over the next week or so.
I have played with magnetic loops in the past with limited success. I decided to pick up the Chameleon F-Loop 3.0 (actually bought 2 of them, one basic and one plus model). The loop is located inside of the condo and offers seamless operation and set up since it’s right next to my rig. I read the manual throughly on this one, I have heard of people doing amazing things with loops, RTFM seemed to be a good starting point. With a small learning curve on operation, tuning, and limitations I was quickly hearing stations all of the world! I purchased to power compensator to allow me to move to 25-30 watts digital modes (highly recommend)!
The loop has been an amazing option given I prefer digital over SSB, the narrow bandwidth of the loop doesn’t bother me at all. I am in the process of packing up and heading back to Memphis, TN where I will hopefully have a better operating condition, I may order the Elecraft K4! In the photos you see here I have my Yaesu packed up and have been running just 5 watts on my KX2.
There are so many claims out there about what antennas will do, can’t do, and everything in between. I just wanted to share my experience and some pictures of what just a little reading, learning, and adaptability can do. Hopefully this helps somebody especially the newer HAMS out there feeling like the apartment life completely restricts their HF abilities.
73 K9ROB
