Posted: 1/6/2016 11:23:30 AM EDT
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Well I fought the good fight and lost against the HOA. It's their association, their rules. I'm still sad though. I'm going to keep the K3 and use it portable but selling the rest.
The EE might have some gear in it if you look. This makes me sick. |
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1. Neighbor over the summer bitched that he could see a wire
2. Moved said wire because I didn't want trouble 3. Heard nothing 4. HOA sent cease and desist letter 5. Fought it with the leagues assistance at HOA board meeting. 6. Board decided at last night's meeting that I have until the 15th to remove any and all antennas or face a $100 a day fine. |
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Once again hate to hear that you're having this problem. Did the neighbor out of the blue "see" the wire or was there some discussion that you were into radio or other way for them to know that you had the wire in the air? I say move but I understand that is probably not an option. This is more of myself having a problem with HOA's in general than your situation. Once you're marked that stays with you so putting up a wire later may not be a great idea. |
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Quoted:
Once again hate to hear that you're having this problem.Did the neighbor out of the blue "see" the wire or was there some discussion that you were into radio or other way for them to know that you had the wire in the air? I say move but I understand that is probably not an option. This is more of myself having a problem with HOA's in general than your situation. Once you're marked that stays with you so putting up a wire later may not be a great idea. It was an out of the blue thing. |
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Sorry to hear that. You can put your antennas on my 120 ft tower. I have been thinking about putting a portable building next to the tower and moving the station out of the house. I'm glad I have a 300 acre lot with no crazy restrictions on it...... Well the county does now limit towers to 50 ft without a variance. It was 80 when mime was built. Under 40 ft attached to the house doesn't even require a permit. |
You still have a ton of options. Flagpoles, wires stapled under the eaves, magloops, etc. Wires on a spool that deploy into your yard at night, etc. How about a grasswire antenna? http://f5ad.free.fr/Liens_coupes_ANT/G/K3MT%20Antenne%20gazon.htm  |
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How tall is the peak of your house? How many radials and of what length can you run? Do you have acces to the attic (assuming non-metalic roof) and ability to drill a few small holes? Wide range tuner? Should also have a ground rod, although not necessarily required if antenna is fully inside.
I may have something for you if you can do most / all of the above. I am installing the 80M - 6M system now in my house for use as the go-to antenna during thunder storms. |
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I'll say it.. MOVE!!! May or may not work for you depending on your interest in the hobby. Ham radio is the one thing that dictates what I drive, and where I live. Won't live anyplace I can't put up antennas. Won't drive anything I can't find room for radio's. But i've been doing this for about a quarter century. |
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Sorry to hear it. Welcome to my world. 
ETA: Attic antennas for the win. Screw them bastards. When my HOA put the screws to my antenna plans I went underground. Attic wire. Moderate (600w) amps. Stacked VHF LPs. Is it as good as a tower and a 2 element on 40? No. Is it better than nothing? Hell yeah! Don't give in to the nanny state. Just work around it. |
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*Learn CW, use it and data
*Put fan dipole in attic, one 20 Meter dipole, one off-center loaded 40 Meter dipole, run 50-100 Watts. I work a lot of people thumbing their noses at the HOA Nazis by doing just that. |
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Quoted:
How tall is the peak of your house? How many radials and of what length can you run? Do you have acces to the attic (assuming non-metalic roof) and ability to drill a few small holes? Wide range tuner? Should also have a ground rod, although not necessarily required if antenna is fully inside. I may have something for you if you can do most / all of the above. I am installing the 80M - 6M system now in my house for use as the go-to antenna during thunder storms. I'm all ears on this. Make a new thread or shoot me an IM please! OP. Don't give up. If you give up they win and there are tons of things you can do. Wire antenna on your fence, up a tree, around your house, hell, maybe you can make a decoy loop that attaches to a satellite dish? I'm still looking for a way to put up a big antenna in a stealthy manner. I have a 66' OCFD strung from my chimney to a tree and it's hard to see as it blends in. In fact, it took a week for the wife to notice it after I told her it was out there. |
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Elijah1 is a high speed, CW operator, with lots of DX experience.
I fully understand the frustration, but I suggest you give it a little time before you start selling off your equipment. There is still plenty of HF fun in your future. 
In fact, this just might be a good excuse to upgrade to a new K3S. 
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Load up the gutters? Get a flagpole?
I wasn't allowed to put up antennas when I lived in a condo. My next door neighbor was the HOA nazi (although we had a great relationship most of the time I lived there). My truck was parked directly in front of my condo. I had a huge Tarheel screwdriver on it so I'd run coax from the house to the truck when I felt like operating. And then the guy who owned my condo decided he was going to not renew my lease while I was unemployed (3 br place; other roommates moved out, he wanted to rent it out to a family) so I switched to total don't-give-a-fuck mode and strung a dipole across the common space 
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rrr6 Quoted:
I'm all ears on this. Make a new thread or shoot me an IM please! Quoted:
Quoted:
...Wide range tuner? Should also have a ground rod, although not necessarily required if antenna is fully inside. I may have something for you if you can do most / all of the above. I am installing the 80M - 6M system now in my house for use as the go-to antenna during thunder storms. I'm all ears on this. Make a new thread or shoot me an IM please! Will do. Once the combo vertical/attic system is finished, next up is real time simultaneous gain comparisons vs. the outside nicely radialed inverted L's. Simultaneous WSPR transmissions make it pretty easy to get good quality data in comparison to the well characterized inverted L reference antennas. It wil be interesting to see how it compares when the vertical leg is just outside the brick walled structure vs. fully contained with the brick walled structure. The quick version is: 45 ft long wire, driven from ground level with a handful of 40-ish ft radials, strung up to the roof apex, and a base "partial matcher" (can also use a 4:1 unun, although with more losses, esp on low bands), and a wide range tuner. Staring with a known working system, like my to my 80 M - 6 M 45 ft (23' up 22' over) inverted L's, gives one a leg up in getting an indoor system working efficiently and on all, or most, bands. |
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A loop in the attic or stapled under the eaves come highly recommended. For starters
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Quoted:
Load up the gutters? Get a flagpole? I wasn't allowed to put up antennas when I lived in a condo. My next door neighbor was the HOA nazi (although we had a great relationship most of the time I lived there). My truck was parked directly in front of my condo. I had a huge Tarheel screwdriver on it so I'd run coax from the house to the truck when I felt like operating. And then the guy who owned my condo decided he was going to not renew my lease while I was unemployed (3 br place; other roommates moved out, he wanted to rent it out to a family) so I switched to total don't-give-a-fuck mode and strung a dipole across the common space I like this idea.
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I like this better for mobile operation. Park this in your driveway and tell them to pack sand. 
Or you could find a friend or family member and remote your K3 station. There is a ham in the St. Louis area that operates an internet remote K3 station with great results. |
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A vehicle parked in the driveway with coax to the shack should be a go. I work a quite a few mobiles running CW at ranges of several hundred miles. There is some QSB if they are in town or mountainous areas, but in flat areas signals are remarkably stable, give or take the occasional underpass.
I kludged up a CW mobile station and found it easier than operating 'phone. The paddles were mounted on the console so I just rested my arm on it rather than reaching for a microphone. If I had to use both hands, I didn't have to fumble around trying to hang up the mike. It was fun, but my commuting times and routes didn't make a permanent installation worthwhile. |
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Load your rain gutters When I was chasing the Triple Play Award, there was this guy in Wyoming who had loaded rain gutters as his antenna. We worked multiple modes and bands. He admitted that it sucked at chasing DX but it kept him on the air. |
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So I finished up the install of the 45 ft quasi inverted L.
The system uses 7 radials, 4x40 footers, and 3x20 footers. Base partial match using my soon to be marketed unit. The purpose of the partial match is to reduce the loss in the feed coax so that cheap RG6 can be used up to 80 feet or so. Currently in this regard, the best one can get is the standard 4:1 unun, but with quite a bit more loss, esp on the lower bands. Tuner is in-shack MFJ QRP T-tuner. Reference antena is full outside inverted L, 18 radials, also base partial match, and in-shack homebrew high power T-tuner. 
House is brick / wood frame and plywood roof with shingles. Radios are phase locked (Rubidium) IC706's, set to 6 wats out, each running WSPR, frequency set 10 Hz apart. 
Data (10 to 15 data points averaged) is somewhat "rough", but still shows that, in general, you are going to be ONLY an S-unit, or an S-unit and a half down from a full outside antenna!!! IOW stealth and HOA hams - DON'T GIVE UP!!!! Here is the data collected thus far (will probably write up an eHam article when data collection is complete): 
The design philosophy is to take a known all band antenna (43 ft vertical), along with a known configuration that gives good low angle all band DX performance (inverted L), and install it in a sort of inverted J to kinda match the interior roof line. We have nice low angle vertical radiation on the low bands, and nice low angle horizontal radiation on the high bands where the peak of the L (or "J") is up around 3/8 wavelength or more. IOW, we DON'T start off with excessively long antennas, narrow band antennas, single band antennas or antennas with crazy lobed patterns,(like EFHW, end-feds of any type, compromise dipoles, etc...), and give our selves the best chance of getting on all or most bands. |
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Quoted:
sell radios....buy guns when next sunspot cycle starts to peak...buy radios again <a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/user/derek45/media/1911/KART2_zpsycnf6n9l.jpg.html" target="_blank">http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/derek45/1911/KART2_zpsycnf6n9l.jpg</a> Custom 1911s are awesome
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Quoted: http://www.astrosurf.com/luxorion/Radio/ant-steppir-portable.jpg I like this better for mobile operation. Park this in your driveway and tell them to pack sand. http://www.remoterig.com/picturepaster/5af3450e871b418bb8b2257118682485.jpg Or you could find a friend or family member and remote your K3 station. There is a ham in the St. Louis area that operates an internet remote K3 station with great results. Pretty neat how a set of K3's are used together in a remote setup. http://www.remoterig.com/wp/?page_id=995 We use RCForb here, with three hams in the family it makes it easy to share the radio on the local LAN and on the ham wifi if out around town and in range of the AP's. I see multiple K3's being used with the RCForb freeware. Hope you stay on the air.  edit to fix link |