Last winter I made a simple drive over stand using a 3 foot pine board, a simple pipe fitting, 4 bolts and nuts and an 18" section of pipe. The setup provides a very solid base for deploying portable antennas. Breakdown and transport are also advantages of this simple stand.
Originally I used the drive over stand with a 20' fiberglass Shakespeare fishing pole and the QRPGuys Portable 40/30/20m Tri-Band Vertical Antenna. Texas, roughly 1400 miles from Long Island was the first contact using the stand/antenna combo.
For another crazy experiment, I bought a SLINKY from Amazon and a 9:1 UNUN from eBay. The UNUN helps to bring the impedance of the contraption into the ballpark.
A small lanyard attached to the SLINKY connects to the eyelet
in the fishing pole.
Soldering an eye connector to the other end of the SLINKY connects it to the antenna side of the UNUN.
Extending the fishing pole, excluding the top section gets the SLINKY fully opened. A the beach I rolled out a 33' counterpoise and attached it to the ground side of the UNUN.
My old Kenwood TS50 and SLINKY performed better than expected. Located only about 50' from the Atlantic the ocean assisted me in getting my signal out. I made a bunch of stateside SSB contacts and a few into Europe.
In summary, the drive over stand and SLINKY antenna was an inexpensive and fun experiment. Using an analyzer and making minor adjustments to the height of the SLINKY and the length of the counterpoise will help to better tune the antenna for a more efficient operating experience.
Related Posts:
How To Build A Cheap Tilt Over Tower72 de KE2YK
No comments:
Post a Comment