Interesting video and a great experiment Fred. Another indoor aerial from back in the day was the Saturn. When I was a kid growing up in Luton we had a bed bound lady up the road from my parents who had one screwed to her wardrobe and an Amstrad 901 and a Bremi power supply at her bedside. It wasn't the greatest antenna, but it enabled her to have human contact with all of the local breakers which was excellent for morale for the old girl. Lovely old girl actually, sadly passed now. Fruit Salad - Barbara RIP

Happy days, took me back to 1979 and 1980, fire stick on a old MG car boot lid in the loft, mum and dad had no idea i had cb radio, great video Fred, and waiting for next one. Gleen from FINLAND

My new claim to fame, my question was used and shown on Fred in the shed 😀. Thanks for answering my question , the video was very helpful , I'm now looking forward to the next video to see how that works. Thanks again.

Its always fun to experiment with antennas.

I'll tell you what my mate did, he drilled a hole just big enough to get through the roof {forgot the name of them, they go on top of the roof and cemented on) just at a joint and stuck through a full quarter wave steel whip (this had no coil and is almost invisible from the ground) if you look hard you could see it, the antenna was sealed with some silicone sealer as it was pushed up through the roof. It was bolted to a bracket (wasn't very strong as roof held it along with the silicone) so it only had to hold it, then silver foil tape was run down inside the roof for a ground plane (4 of just running away at an angle, and length was not even though of) and the foil went into the bottom of the antenna where it would have been mounted on a car. This worked very well for someone that is stuck, it is a good option. The whip was thin enough to go through without any problems, he used it for around 6 years without any problem. He was a Ham, he was visited by Ofcom one night and they looked at his big antenna outside and thought it was a silver rod, but it was 2meters (dummies) so when they were told it was for two meters they then asked where the CB antenna was. They couldn't miss the fact he had a CB as it was on when they came to the door. When he told them where it was they looked up and decided it was legal (it wasn't at the time), it was hard to see anyway. I doubt he was getting more than two watts out at best due to the coax run he had, but it worked for him and he was using a Communicator DX I think it was? Nice sounding radio on transmit, but the receiver was crap! I know someone that had an antenna inside a vent pipe running up his house, there was no water it it as it was part of the toilet vent. it was some sort of Silver Rod without the small radials (works using an internal transformer tapped at the right spot. it worked very well as the pipe was plastic. Wouldn't work with the old cast iron ones! The old thunder pole with the 45 degree would work fine, take off the coil and put a 1/4 wave whip on instead. Better still, get two 1/3 wave steel whips, make a square "U" shaped bracket and fit the bracket so one whip will point up and the other straight down, the one pointing up will be attached to the centre of the coax and the other will be a ground plane. The "U" will be on its side with two holes for the antennas, screw it to a wall or railing, anything, but think when you are making it if you need the "U" shape bigger a bracket to fixing, also the "U" has to be wide enough for both antenna bases to fit inside. After fitting it might work as is, but it may need a balun, try just making a few turns of coax near the antenna (this will need a bit of experimenting) but the SWR should come down to at least 1:5 to 1 or less. 1:5 to 1 is fine, the radio will be quite happy. There are other options for hidden antennas, if you have a tree near to the house, it can be hidden in it, if you use a whit or two whips like a dipole it can be hidden away. There used to be a thin antenna like a Silver Rod at one time, but i have not seen any mention of it for years, but you could make one. There is nothing like trying things out, look into a Ham book and look at 11 meter 28MHz antennas for ideas. They need to be a bit longer for 27MHz 11 Meters, but it can be worked out, if anything, just start off longer and cut small bits off or slide one pole inside another. For wire antennas, just fold the wire back on itself and as for as the radio waves are concerned you have cut a bit odd, if it is to short, just unfold a bit. Go play!

Back when I was on CB in the late 80's maybe early 90's, a guy was running one of these in his attic/loft and did quite well with it; at least locally. Now I'm getting back into the CB world on my way to HAM radio and looking at setting one of these up.

Still not long enough Fred, make it an hour....love your very informative vids...thanks

Always my first port of call when looking for help/advice on getting back into CB. Simple, interesting no nonsense and to the point. Many thanks Fred for taking the time & trouble to do these vids.

I have an inverted vee antenna in my loft and works well..also added a choke for 11 meters.. all hung and tensioned on high voltage insulators I got cheap off ebay.. work all of europe and states,, no probs..

Way back in the late 70's we used biscuit tins ,bin lids or anything we could lay our hands on,to act as a groundplane for an inside vertical job !!! Everyone was terrified of the GPO or Busbie in those days.LOL Great Times :)

That was a fair enough experiment. At least you've proven that all is not lost if one can manage to try a few different antenna orientations. I think there is always a viable way to set up a functional antenna if we are creative enough. I seen some real neat and stealthy antennas that work inside and out. As you said. "desperate times mean desperate measures." Thanks for sharing Fred.

I had the mini boomerang in my loft in the early 80's. I changed the ground plain part for a DV27 and had one of the best "getting out" setups on the estate with it.

Hi fred ive come back from the late 70s i think ive got carried away lol my shed looks like an arial farm i love my 6900n love it and watching your blogs ive lernd alot thanks👍

½wave dipole horizontal in the attic works great on DX and better than my tornado 27 on DX , it doesn't matter the polarity when it comes to skip contacts

Fred - Horizontal antennas are not "less efficient" - its cross polarisation when communicating with a station with a vertical antenna. Horizontal antennas - if centre fed, are often (not always) less noisy than a vertically polarised antenna (when not mounted in a loft). A lot of man made noise is vertically polarised. A better solution for a loft is to use a 1/4 wave whip on a ground plane with four tuned quarter wave radials. An SWR of 1.6 is fine - using the matcher does nothing except making an already fine SWR unneccesarily flat. Any SWR 2:1 or less is perfectly acceptable, even at full power.

I was a Hard working CBer on 1/ 40 and 555 so I have had a foot in both camps. I have heard very intelligent operators on cb and ham radio and like everywhere else we have some numb nuts in both camps. Don’t worry about the peeing comp just get into and enjoy it ! Richard vk2ual

In the old days (70's-80's) had a 7ft firestik on a biscuit tin in the loft worked all over the world with a 100watt elbex Pacific on am ssb. Now have a solacon max 2000 higher than my roof and have trouble getting anything. Bring back the old days.

Another trick which is stealthy and works well is to put the inverted V dipole wires, outside on the barge boards at the end of the house. This follows the natural V of the roofline and then run the coax into the loft. People don't notice it or think it's landline phone wires. You get more signal and less noise that way.

I love cute lil Dude in the shed.

Many years ago there was a friend of mine that lived in a condo type place and each unit had an attic above it. The rules forbid any exterior antennas so I made him an antenna unit that fit in the attic space . I took two aluminum poles and flattened them each in the center using a heavy duty vice and also gave both poles a slight downward bend next to the flattened section. I then purchased a CB mirror mount and took it apart, drilled the same size hole in the center of both poles . I then layered them over one another creating an x shape and installed the mirror mount through the two poles , attached the coax wire and brought it to the CB. I then mounted a 5 or 6 foot Firestick type antenna to the top side of the connector . This essentially made a mini groundplane type antenna setup. This of course is not as good as a full sized 5/8 wave groundplane on a tower but it at least gave the person the ability to easily talk 3-4 suburbs in every direction . Another friend was living on the tenth floor of an apartment that had a balcony. He bought the largest metal picnic table that could fit in the space and when he wanted to use his CB , he would stick a large magnet mount antenna to the middle of the table . With this height this gave him an incredible ability to talk good distances.

i can put this on a 10 hour loop and watch it - excellent video.

Hey Fred! I have a Firestick IBA5 indoor antenna kit I use in the unused front bedroom of my home sitting on a 20" by 20" steel plate. It works reasonably well on recieving but the output isn't great. I play with this setup and bought it for a moble setup for camping, but it will work in a dwelling also. Really enjoy your videos! Keep up the good work. 👍👍👍

My first CB aerial back in '78/'79 was a DV27 in the loft. It was mounted on a biscuit tin with X4 1/4u radials and worked absolutely fine! Yes a "Shaky Big Stick" mounted outside would have been better but it worked well for me. REMEMBER THAT GROUND PLANE!!!

a guy near me is in a place where he can't put up a big base antenna and he did an inverted L in his tree and gets really good results. in his case the "hot" side of the diapole is horizontal on top and the bottom is the ground side and is vertical down from the center, again it's an inverted L

My grandads loft antenna has been in use for over 25 years, it's a 4ft firestick, mounted on a 2ft tripod with 12 x 10ft copper wire radials connected to a center plate DV mount, the radials are roughly 20 degree angle, the swr reading is slightly above zero, he often talks to my uncle who lives nearly 40 miles away..

Hi Fred great video i have been off air since the mid 80s now got back into it , i have a mobile rig and wanted a homebase setup after seeing you videos my mind was made up i to tried a inverted V dipole in the loft got SWR down to about 1.1.4 had a few contacts but was not good as i was only getting out in one direction so i seen your video on outside antennas i got a silver rod in back garden using a metal pole into the ground attached a 10 foot mast and on top the silver rod with SWR DOWN TO 1.1..1.2 now getting up to 30-40 miles and on good days the States and Poland the rig is a Preident Martin 4-5 watt cannot wait to get SSB. Hope to see more videos ..take care Fred AK banana split......

Giving that your outside aerial has a decent gain, your horizontal wire out of phase 90° is doing ok, likely do better in the skip via sky-wave. Great video Fred 😁👍

Another great video Sir 👍 Thanks for making and uploading, keep up the good work, always look forward to new videos.

When on holiday I use a 3/8 stud dipole centre to make a loaded dipole out of 2 mobile CB antennas. Vertical polarisation and would fit in a loft quite easily Fred. I use it on 27 & 28 Mhz

Aviary mesh makes a good ground plane it's both lightweight and flexible for those harder to get into smaller attics. You can also add to it quite easily🤔👍

Hey Fred a Ham Radio guy at work was renting an apartment in Newark, NJ and could not mount a permenent antenna. What he did was get a large, flat aluminum baking pan and mount an antenna to one end and then stick the pan out of the window then close the window down on the other end of the baking pan to hold it in place. He claims that he got pretty good results with it and the aluminum pan provided a horizontal ground plane. This may be a good option for some people. CC

Hello friend from over in the colonies. Great experiment great outcome I think. Love watching your videos keep up the good work. I am 2na750 Ohio USA

Great video mate Your twin mobile antennas are the same as the ole Modulators. Great ariels mate

One thing I tried many years ago was a helium balloon .. Attached the pre- measured length of copper wire via a plastic insulator to the balloon (s), and then just let it do it's thing...1/2 wave vertical on 40 Metres got me working Hawaii from Dartmoor using 10 watts on SSB from the comfort of my car. Not so good on windy days !

When it comes to antennae, the answer to the question, "Will it work?" is, "Try it, and let me know."

Hi Fred I really believe in this experiment the foil loft insulation is acting like a faraday cage and massively attenuating the signal. Also for local DX if your contacts are vertically polarised, they will be well down signal wise to what they would be on the vertical. If DX was running the horizontal would be quieter and directional with gain broadside to the direction of the antenna. very interesting video Fred.

I made a 36ft wire dipole strung at washing line height made from 2.5 twin core wire. Ive used the magic DV27, mag mount and tinfoil ground planes. I still have the DV27. Half breed, mag mount on top of a cast iron fall pipe... That worked far better than it deserved. My buddy lived in a top floor flat and used a mag mount on the metal balcony hand rail. When he was mobile he had a 9ft rippoff firestick mounted on the bumper... Looked like a dodgems.. Those Thunderpole antennas look like copies of the old Modulator

BTW, I get easy contacts from south of france to Italy and Germany with a similar antenna (horizontal zig-zag wire, three legs) with 5watts LSB on 40m, also in attic.

A friend of mine back in the 80s used a loft mounted dv27 on a biscuit tin with loads of radials connected! He worked the world with 12w ssb but conditions back then were great if course👍

If that silver stuff on the ceiling is aluminium it will not work. The RF is blocked due the Faraday Cage effect. If you can mount the wire between the aluminium and the ceiling the RF will punch through the wood. RF getting out of the is probably getting out through window openings. It will work better without the aluminium blocking the RF signal.

Me always in for the long haul Fred, when you say it you say it well ,time is of no consequence.

Remember Thunderpole 3? I had a couple of them they were based around the coil from a Modulator Mobile whip. Great antennas.

That dipole coupler that you have is also done in a V shape which would be better for use in the loft/attic. The aerials are either modulators or bullwhips. And you WILL do much better if you use a balunon your dipole as you are feeding a balanced antenna with UN balanced coax. This could very easily cause severe RF issues in your shack. The balun will eliminate this problem. The most likely cause of you bad rx and tx on the t2lt was probably due to it being made directional in the horizontal plane. Many people forget that a horizontal antenna is directional. Also the fact again that you didn't use a balun and a better atu would also be a BIG help👍👍 Keep experimenting and enjoy your radio. All the best and looking forward to your dipole videos. 73's from 26CT2381 / 2E0LFD---M6NZU. 🇬🇧👍😎👍🇬🇧

Having place for horizontal antenna and need for vertical one, I would experiment with a slot design of some sort...

When you're done with the home made dipole Fred, you should try attaching one of those whips to a magmount base and onto the obligatory biscuit tin in the loft just like the old days (it is for me anyway). It would be interesting to see how that setup would work on ssb. Keep up the good work, the vids are always interesting. 73's 26CT3106.

I made a dipole ,put it up on a nylon rope between 2 trees and was able to talk about 10 miles to my son in his truck.

I have t2lt in my loft and can receive up to 30 miles away..what I have done is tie wrapped the top end were the swr adjustment is come down 4 foot to a sweeping brush broom and have it vertical so top of it is right up in apex and were it come of the broom 4 foot down I take it 45 degrees back up to apex run along apex then aim back down to radio ...I have swr of 1.2 and work a lot skip with it

I had a boomerang for a while in the aunty Mary days

i had a modulator in the loft on chicken wire filling the loft getting out better than my pal 500 yards away he had a silver rod as for interferance never got any problems

u must try a home make Bazooka and a 1:1 balun the hot side vertical or inverted V but watch out tl or led-lighting for interference

I hit Liverpool on am with a horizontal wire dipole from South coast

Hi Fred your dipole worked better for locals in the inverted V configuration' than horizontal' that's because it was working like a vertical with omnidirectional radiation . its greatest degree of radiation is at right angles to the axis of the antenna, its radiation pattern is more omnidirectional than that of a horizontal dipole as a result of the fact that the legs are angled downwards.

I use what I would describe as an inverted L in my loft and it works pretty well. Start with you feed point on the floor in the middle of your loft. Connect the inner of the coax to a piece of cable cut at 2.6 meters. String this up vertically as high as you can and then run the remainder of the cable horizontal. Next connect 4 ground plains to the coax outer at 2.6 meters long and pull them too the four corners of your roofspace. I can get people around 7-8 miles away at S7.

Hi Fred, My uncle was a radio pirate in the 80's i have an old cb laying around and last night i listened to turkey, china and argentine on my 1947 tube radio. I'm inspired. :)) Trains, steam engines and radio! Fascinating hobbies. Ghehe But i've got a question. How do you connect it? A dipool has two sides, i presume that you solder one to the inner and the other to the outer part of the coax cable? Thanks in advance mate. :))

Another great video Fred.

the one with yellow band is a modulator i use two of them in a dipole for 28 megs usb worked usa brazil japan when bands open plus had one in loft ran 100 watts no tvi

As long as the antenna is 1/2 wave or more above the ground there's no reason why it shouldn't work fine. I've been using a horizontal antenna (a double bazooka) for three years as I live in a flat and it works very well.....it also picks up less noise than an indoor vertical antenna. The signal strength will be one or two "S points" lower than usual if you're talking to someone who has a vertical antenna which isn't really a problem because the noise-level is also lower, but when you're talking to someone who also has a horizontal antenna the quality is excellent. I'm surrounded by hills at my QTH but I can easily get 30 (or more) miles in some directions. These antennas are very broad-banded too and my SWR is below 1.5:1 all the way from low-band to the top of the "muppets" band (tested with my antenna analyser). I bought my double bazooka from this website, if anybody is interested in getting one: www.wireantennas.co.uk/double_bazooka.html

when 30 years ago i put my di pole in the loft cause some one cut cut my coax cable i lived in a bunglelow so it solved the problem and yes signal was a bit weaker but it never got cut again

I'm just setting up in my loft so this is really helpful thanks Fred as I'm a total newbie to CB radio I've learnt such a lot from your videos keep em coming. I have been offered a crt ss6900 which you and others rave about and they want £90 for it its as new the guy said so would you buy it or is it worth getting a new one ?

Hi Fred I have a loop in the Loft and mine works very well, you need to remove all the metal around including the loft insulation.

Great Job👍Greetings from Germany!55,73 from 13HN730

Well you lose something like 3db with mismatched polarity between tx and rx units. Do not quote me on that 3db number but it is a significant lose when polarity between 2 stations are not matching. Now when looking at DX propagation it does not matter because the polarity is rather random and rotating after one bounce. So this is significant if talking local but not a problem if not talking locally.

THANKS FRED.. DES CREAN BELFAST ,,IRELAND,, 68CT022

I’ve seen a dude using a 1:1 balun for a very well performing inverted V dipole, 7m (I think) each leg.

I have been using wires for years, they are directional so really not great for FM. However SSB wise I have had all over the world, South Africa was a great contact on a home made wire.

Some of the restrictions are a contributing factor to the decline in people using CB. I don't know why some councils or housing assoc's are against people having a CB aerial up when it's just a long aluminium pole...

Another thing to look at is the quad loop,you can put 2 in the loft facing different directions!

Hi Fred i am in exactly that situation i live in a flat 1st floor cant put an external aerial up but do have a loft and one of the first things i did when i moved in was to get up there and i put up the sirio boomerang and a wire dipole suspended in a v configeration in free airspace with an ceramic dogbone insulator at each end tied to the rafters it is centre fed and good for dx ing when conditions are available i have worked Germany Czech Polish swedish dutch stations on my dipole with a crt 6900 i have reasonable local stuff with the boomerang and good swr on both antennas i upgraded my radio and now have the yaesu ft 857d widebanded and i do hear you guys with out any problems i will give you all a shout one morning i am in Croxley green Robbie cant be far away as he blows my windows out lol anyway just to let you all know it can be done on limited antenna space ie loft all the best LT65 Ian.

Thanks for the video!

I have talked to quite a few people who used a dipole antenna on USB.

I Made Tampa bay Florida on an iverted half wave coax di pole in the loft 3 years ago on usb using 12 w.

Hi Fred, Hoping you can help... Haven't touch a rig since 1984 lol yep the good old days of Yankee radios and dodging buzby.. Well im thinking of jumping back in but im years out of date.. Im looking at the CRT SS 6900 radio but not sure hows best to set it up,, do go straight out the box I do I have the buttons pushed. So am I gona be a good boy or take a walk on the wild side ;o) ....Mainly want to work the 11mt bandsps. Watched your vid on the inverted VEE,, they work fine if you set the elements at 45 degs and use 2 driven elements and ground plains, pyramid style, centre feed them...... Cheers Tom

Thanks Fred, Yes I have ordered from Knights. Was reading their listing on fleebay, seems the one ive ordered can be modded by pushing, no cable needed. Now where can I get a 6 element beam lol

That metallic heat shielding will reflect your sign . Test it with a multimeter on ohms.

I wonder if that aluminum insolation in your loft is going to have a affect on the SWR

Good video Fred , gave you a thumbs up shane

Good solid experimenting... do you have a video explaining and showing how you used the Rotel and Equalizer to connect several radios up to external speakers?

I noticed metal on the inside of the roof, insulation? That would severely limit the signal transfer to outside.

An UNUN driving a long wire antenna might work for what you want.

Hello Just bought a President Trueman CB with an 4ft fibreglass aerial with 3 ground pane rods. Connected the coax properly. Fixed it into the loft space not touching anything. Two of the ground pane things touch the roof timber. The coax fitted to the radio. All switched on and set for UK FM, the squelch set to auto. Nothing, no comms at all. Squeeze the mic and the band goes black all the way. Also fitted aerial to pole in the garden to a height of 20 ft. The shop said all parts I.e coax and aerial are matched.Can you advise possible problem.

The conversation at 15:46 was really clear, not really a SSB-type voice.

ONCE YOU POLARIZED HOROZONTAL YOU HAVE TO ADJUST FOR DIRECTION ALSO.

the thermal insulation is conductive and will mess with your signal. put an ohm meter on it.

Forgot to mention I can hear the 305 group only problem is the antenna is between two houses and you are to the west to me, which I don’t have a great take off from other directions I boom out from so that’s a shame

If you are in the USA then you need to take and successfully pass the following exams Foundation,General,Technician,Advanced and Extra plus the Morse test, In the UK you do the Foundation and General exam plus Morse and the other exams may come into being in the years to come but I suspect that the RSGB should adopt the ARRL Exams for licensing purposes.

Interesting! I have some questions I hope you can answer, any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you! Hello, I came across your video while searching for videos on Alinco radios. I enjoyed your video! I have a request about a Alinco DR-112 radio. Might you have one, or know about this radio that you could answer questions or make a video that answered my questions? I am very new to this hobby. I bought my first radio on line, it came with no instruction manual. I can not understand how to operate it!? I can get it powered up. I can change frequencies up and down. I can find no traffic on any frequency. I hear no voices on any frequency. Except for the power button, I do not understand what each of the buttons on the front does. Except for the channel up and down buttons, I don't know what each of the buttons does that are located on the microphone. I cannot find any videos on KZfaq, that address these questions. I'm hoping you can help me, or make a videos that addresses these questions, if if you were to use a similar radio to mine? Thank you!!! I would greatly appreciate your efforts! I down loaded the owners manual. but with just 8 pages, it didn't answer my questions. I wonder how old my DR-112 is, that I am having difficulties finding information on it, and learning how to use it?

Would you post the name of the T piece you used, because my searches are returning nothing even remotly close to what you used. Maybe where you purchased it from to, would help. Thank you!

Hi Fred, isnt your aluminium coated insulation acting like a screen, like a Faraday cage of sorts?

The Boomerang is still readily available on eBay

It’s a thunderpole atom or voyager Fred,a modulator copy

Would a silver rod be suitable for muppets,am and ssb what would I expect a good swr to be?

it's a voyager aka modulator Fred

Also what sort of comments do you like people giving you in the chat about your videos thank you

hi,fred ,interesting video,well explained,sure some peaple will find it useful,as a good alternative,on an other subject,i hear on 2 meters,and 70cm radios,there are 16 or so free bands,and with free repeaters can talk different countries with,some as cheap as 50 pound new,and no licence required so long as you dont adjust them,what do you think,rotterdam.

yes

You could always make yourself a Texas bug catcher antenna. Yes I know I said make not buy... Making stuff yourself now a days seems alien to most folks.

Is there one loft antenna arrangement that will work for both CB and ham radio? Thanks Fred :)

Telling other people in an arrogant tone that they don't know Jack makes you no better than them Sir

*_Fred, I live in the USA. (Los Angeles) I've been watching your videos for some time. Very enjoyable. I got an FT-450D from Ebay. It has a problem. The transmit icon is blinking and the radio will not key up. I know you have a FT-450D with a mars mod. Have you ever run into this before?_*

Hi ya Fred have you seen the signal keeper antenna it’s supposed be for the loft space?