At 44 years old I’ve jumped back into my radio hobby with gusto: But I now find myself living in northern Manhattan in New York City, with no yard, in a second floor apartment that faces an inner courtyard on one side, and masses of urban infrastructure on the other. I can hit the local repeaters with my HT, and even some not so local ones with a 2meter/70cm quad that I built – but how boring is that? I like HF. I like a challenge and the thrill of overcoming a problem with a workable solution.

I started with an indoor doublet. A doublet is another word for dipole, but usually refers to a dipole that is fed with balanced feed line and tuned to operate on the band desired. I got about 70 feet of 23 gauge magnet wire string in a z-shape from one end of the apartment to the other and fed it with TV twinlead. Needless to say, the results were not stellar… buried inside brick and morter, surrounded by many other structures and in the middle of an RF nightmare – from the plasma TV, to my home computer network, and anything else capable to creating interference. I managed to work one or two stations via ground wave but it was nearly useless.

After looking around various ham radio websites, I discovered the Jackite fiberglass pole, which is 31′ long and can be purchased for under $70 online (try E-Bay). It telescopes down to 4 feet and extends out to something resembling an oversize fishing pole, 31 feet long. I got to thinking – there are trees in back of our apartment building in an alley between our building and a small public green space opposite my fire escape. Our neighborhood is in one of the highest elevations on Manhattan – my QTH is around 200-220 feet above the Hudson River. I realized I could get on my fire escape (another 20 feet up) and push an antenna up into the trees.

I built a fan dipole with legs cut for 40, 20 and 10 meters – planning to use it on 15 meters as well which is the third multiple of 40 meters in wavelength. I fastened the vertex outside my bedroom window and pushed the ends of the 40 meter legs up into the trees (with porcelain dog-bone insulators on the end for weight). It was much harder to get the 20 and 10 meter legs in a good position due to their short size, and the distance away of the trees. None the less, performance increased and I worked a bunch of new stations on 40 and 20 using SSB and PSK31.

I decided that the best idea would be to get a simple doublet up in the tree line that sits at around 50 feet above the ground. It would be far easier to manage two legs than six. I could tune it with high efficiency on all bands if I fed it with balanced line. The only drawback was managing the balanced line into my apartment on the second floor – and figuring out how to pull this off since the roof is off limits to tenants – and I doubt my ability to convince the superintendent that my radio obsession is important enough for him to let me up there to do my thing.

Roof tops and trees

I managed to get my antenna in place – although the exact method will have to remain up to your imagination. It is in a V configuration that has a vertex at nearly 70 feet and droops down to about 40 feet. All in all the 102′ doublet is between 40 and 70 feet off the ground. Its not a perfect installation, but I kept it clear of most metal, power, networking, and phone cables. It makes the occasional brush, but avoids extended runs parallel to any one line. One could make a similar doublet with plain zip cord as a feedline. Old timers used to do this frequently. There’s always a solution: its a matter of making the most of (or minimizing) compromises.

The real test was getting it on the air – and it was like having a new radio. The noise level was down. Signals could be heard, and I was immediately able to work stations from Mexico to Wisconsin and South Carolina to Kentucky with S9 signal reports. After weeks of no responses to ‘CQ’, suddenly people were responding!

Success! and if the forces of nature and neighbors allow me to keep my antennas in the trees for awhile I’ll be most happy.

Hurray! Time to start working those sweet parts of 20 and 40 meters, and get one of those fancy call signs!