My old 14AVQ died

[N7OQ]

Well After a our big storm and few smaller ones I noticed that my SWR was bad on all bands. Well today I took it down and cleaned all the connections, fixed and broken trap cover and put the analyzer on it and it is still bad and when I move the antenna like a small wind the swr jumps real bad. It look like I have 1 or 2 bad traps so decided to retire it. I bought it back on 1978 and it had gone from South Carolina to California, Washington, Germany, Wyoming, back to California and has done me great service. I don't know what is inside those traps but sense I plan on getting rid of it I will take one apart, they are screwed and pressed together.

Now I have to find something else to use might have to put up a long wire until I can get something else up. I'm not suppose to have any antennas here, CC&R's but there is no committee to enforce them and none have been enforced in the last 13 years. With that I will still keep things a low key anyway. I was thinking about a Hexbeam on a pushup pole mounted to the back of the house. All the antennas I have built I painted flat black and they are hard to see unless you are looking for them. Has anyone here used one?

[w7wv]

Never used a Hex beam but I would hate to see you spend the time and money and have someone enforce the rules on you and have to take it down. Most beams attract attention period. By the time you get them up high enough they are quite visible as is the structure required to support them.
I have dealt with HOAs and the jerks that run them before. Busy bodies that have nothing better in their lives to play neighborhood cops in my opinion.
How about a vertical with a tuner? That's all the SteppIR is. Take a look at the Specs on the Big or Small IR vertical.
I know many that have them and some the are in very restrictive housing projects and they go unnoticed.
I finally bought property with no antenna restrictions whatsoever and now we are looking at selling and hitting the road. Oh well.

http://www.steppir.com/Technical.html

[N7OQ]

Hi Ken,

Well I did look at the SteppIR and though it would be a great antenna but the lead time to get one is about 6 months and they are expensive. I was going to buy one but have sense moved the funds to other projects like a new Telescope , house painting, and a new Garden shed that will be my new Ham shack.

As far as CC&R's go I really don't think I would have a problem sense there is no one assigned to enforce them. All my neighbors have violated them like making RV parking, changing the color of their house moving fences changing their landscape. I could find a violation with every neighbor if I wanted to. When they built these homes in the early 90's the market was dropping like it is now so the company auctioned off the homes they had left and sold the rest of the land to a builder who didn't have cc&r's and left town. According to the CC&R's when the project was done all the home owners in this area were to vote for a committee to enforce the CC&R's, well that never happened plus half the homes built were built by a contractor who had no cc&r's. So we just sit in limbo.