Amateur Radio

[SUNRAY]

Tangential comments from another thread:

Due to that situation I described, my policy ever since has been to put any new aerial up and not use it (even avoiding installing a feeder or initial testing) for a while and wait for the complaints which often arrive before the transmitting starts.


And to demonstrate a point, the neighbour Son to the left of this recently cleared a load of overgrowth, they rediscovered they had a greenhouse and soon complained this 'new aerial' was causing a problem, it has been there prior to 2012 according to gmaps.
I suspect they are looking at selling as the elderly owner is now very immobile.
View attachment 300375

In the many decades since I moved here, and from the start, I've had a massive inverted V, two monopoles, amateur TV antennas, plus a wifi long distance link. At one time, I even had a mobile mast fully extended, in my drive. All are unmissable, but I have never had any complaints.

I've lived in 4 properties where I've operated transmitters, the first was FM CB from childhood home, caused havoc on neighbours TV, there was basically 6ft between our aerials and feeders, moving mine to other side of house sorted the problem.

Second place I've described first incident, following that were regular complaints from several neighbours but I traced that to a Taxi office about 250m away, I even fixed the horrible plastic tape wrapped PL259 join in their feeder FOC, followed by my immediate new neighbour and the complaints persisted despite demonstrating it was their sunbed, which was also interfering with the sound on one channel of my TV. Eventually called in my colleagues at BT interference on them.


Third location was where I did most operating, 3m pole out through roof tile for: selection of inverted V's to front and rear fence or rotator with 6m or 4m or 2m or 70cm beam. all of which were just about TV aerial height and not a single complaint, one neighbour was happy for me to use his rear fence to get 160m dipole in.

Where I am now my immediate neighbour seems to think he has priority over everyone else and makes official complaints about all around him despite being the worst neighbour we've all encountered, council won't even come to investigate his complaints anymore and police make phone calls if they bother at all. I'm sure the new complaint from the next neighbour along (See pic) below) is based purely on aesthetics as I rarely transmit from home these days and the times he quoted I was not even home, added to that he couldn't really tell me what the problem was.
The 4.8m pole (being the legal limit for a flagpole without planning permission) in the top picture and shown by a red dot below is just that and formed one end support for occasional temporary inverted V which pretty much ran along the boundary shown pink with a 12m Clark scam plus 5m glass fibre extention mid point.

So in essence: No I haven't caused problems (apart from the very brief CB from home) but being the one with aerials up one becomes the automatic target for complaints.

 

[ericmark]

I have only had one problem, it was my transition as he could tell me what I had said, a whole load of radios were exported to the Falklands and their front ends were wide open, they as a result would not work in the UK, but with only one radio on Falklands they would work OK.

Except when next door to me, using 25 watt (VP8BKM) so I said I will contact the post office in Stanley and see if they can sort it, followed by you have got a radio licence, showing him my licence, which still said you needed a licence to just recive radio, I was rather naughty, as I knew that requirment was no longer valid.

But he said oh I enjoy listening in, not need to contact the post office. So got away with it.

Your inverted V reminds me of having to go to the fast jets and say Fred VP8PTG asks if he can have his aerial back, they had been practicing low flying, and were in the process of removing bits of aerial from the aircraft when I got there, so he got a brand new aerial out of the RAF.

 

[SUNRAY]

Back in 1972 HF field day we played with a box kite (admiralty weather kite IIRC), came with possibly 100 yards of cord to which we attached 1000ft of... I'll call it olive drab coloured conductive string, It loaded nicely on all bands and worked well. The next day we added a second and third 1000ft. At times it was outperforming a Rhombic and mostly outperforming the selection of dipoles but required a person managing it. Pulling it down was hard work with only the slightest of draft.

The scary thing was watching it fall when the wind stopped and seeing 3000ft of string forming a trail of spaghetti across and area about 5 feet wide and less than 100ft long.

The even scarier thing was seeing a light aircraft fly over to land at a private airstrip less than a mile away.

 

[ericmark]

I remember them, a guy had one anchored to a Relient regual which was not heavy enough and we all had to hold onto it while it was tied to another car as it was being dragged down the field.

 

[SUNRAY]

I remember them, a guy had one anchored to a Relient regual which was not heavy enough and we all had to hold onto it while it was tied to another car as it was being dragged down the field.

That I can quite believe