How about making a homebrew multiband vertical for $not very much at all, one that will literally fit in your pocket?
Use a steel tape measure as the vertical radiator, with the body of the measure lofted into the sky using a very low tech "bit of string" hanging over the branch of a tree. Run out a few radials on the ground beneath, and feed with a short run of coax to your Elecraft exciter. Pull or slacken the string to adjust the length and get it to resonate and radiate on whichever band you are using (you may be lucky if the body of the measure is heavy enough to reel itself down when you release the string, but a safer method uses a complete loop of string over the support, attached to the tape measure body, so you can pull it either way). A 10m tape measure will do for 7MHz and up, provided you can find a sky hook at least 10m up (palm trees in the tropics are about 15m high, I guess). If your tape is only 8m long (most are, here in NZ), simply add an extension - a couple of metres of wire on the free end of the tape - and connect that to your coax. For 80m, if you have a 20m sky hook, you can extend the radiator by adding another 10m of wire on the bottom end, or simply use the length of wire as an inverted-L over whatever skyhook you can muster, the higher the better. Spring steel is not an ideal conductor but it's good enough, especially as you will have /P and perhaps an exotic prefix for "gain"! I think of this as the poor man's Steppir vertical. If the aforementioned palm tree is dangling over the sea on a tropical island, your $negligible investment will amaze you. There's a paper describing a slightly more sophisticated version on the web - Google "Fat Max antenna" (Fat Max being the brand name of the tape measure he used). 73 Gary ZL2iFB > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:elecraft- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Tellez > Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 13:14 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Elecraft] Portable antnennas > > Hello all, > > I would like to get some advice - based on experience - regarding the various > portable antenna options there are currently available on the market. I am > considering the buddipole system, super antenna, chameleon, and others. I > am interested in hearing about performance and quality/ durability of the > construction. I am not going to be backpacking with the antenna but > portability and ease of setup is a consideration. I will be operating from 6m > all the way through 80m. > > Thanks to all in advance. > > Mark > __________________________________________________________ > ____ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
