[Antennas] All steel 26ga roof

Tue Sep 20 11:45:21 EDT 2005

My experience with metal roofs has been entirely positive! The best low 
antenna I ever used was a folded dipole for 40M strung in inverted Vee fashion 
over the roof of a house trailer. The peak of the Vee was no more than 8 feet 
above the roof and the ends were no more than a foot above the roof. This 
proved to be the best 40M antenna I've ever had. I could work Europe from 
Alabama barefoot two hours before sunset.

This worked so well that I used the same antenna from Okinawa Japan 
suspended in inverted vee fashion over a steel reinforced concrete roof. Again, it 
worked great. In the 1986 CQWW, I worked several stateside stations on 40M 
running QRP.

I also had wire antennas above corrugated steel roofs at a Air Force work 
site and never experienced any of the noise problems that have been noted by 
others, but then I was using horizontal wire antennas. The question I would 
ask is why even use a roof mounted vertical, when a multiband inverted vee feed 
with ladder line through a tuner will outperform it in spades with only a 
modest (10') center support?

My recommendation, try it! If it works keep it up, if not take it down!

73, Paul