I just finished partially assembling a Ham Radio vertical antenna in preparation for its installation on the roof of our Condominium above the spot its coaxial cable will enter the wall of my office over the bookcase to which the radio will be moved. I was looking out of the window in the office watching the Comcast cable installer working on taking out the old wiring that predated our moving here.

Thinking this was as good an opportunity I was going to get I opened the window and asked him if he could drill a hole through the wall at a point where I would reassemble my rig from the balcony of our apartment.  One reason for doing this was to NOT have the antenna visible from the street.  Moving it to the side of the apartment would shield it from view and comments. Uniformity of appearance is important to the denizens of condominiums either high or low rise. Since I spend a great deal of time at the computer in our second bedroom/office, bringing all my toys together makes a great deal of sense – to me.

Raising an antenna up on a roof to communicate to the world should be a simple thing.  It is not technically, lawfully and convenient.  I cannot do the work as I once did when I had my own house in New Jersey and could do virtually anything I wanted on my own property. It was there I earned my first license and set up a simple horizontal dipole antenna attached to the chimney high on the roof and extended to a tree on my property line.  It was no problem on the roof for at that time I was sure-footed as well as unafraid. Getting the antenna up to a limb on the tree was a problem solved by slinging a weighted rope up numerous times until it flipped over and down to where we could haul the rig in and tie it off on the tree.

It is different here.  There are so many considerations other than visibility. My mentor here said a vertical antenna – a souped up version of a mobile car antenna would do the work. It should do it much better than the dipole I brought from house to Condo rooftop and set up between two raised tripods weighted down by sacks of gravel.  I had to take this down because inspectors pointed out quite rightly that our winds down here in South Florida could blow all this away and damage properties across the street.

So, I have made preparations for someone else to install on the inside low wall of the roof (not on the roof) brackets that will hold a section of PVC tubing into which the antenna will sit.  The antenna has “rays” or wires projecting down and away from the main wire and the coax cable will be attached to its bottom and then down to the hole drilled for me by the cable guy. But, I will not be up there since I have been banned from roof climbing by Carol. My question stands. How is YOUR antenna and do you have any idea to which toy yours is attached?