I've thought about that for the folks doing DXpeditions, like for a full size 160m vertical, but the problem is that most drones sophisticated enough for GPS positioning have REALLY intelligent batteries. The ones in my drone (DJI MAvic Air 2) automatically keep track of the number of recharges they've had, and they will even self-discharge to about 60% after three days of non-use so that the batteries don't suffer from storage at full charge. It might be possible to run multiconductor wire to handle all of the connections and then use the regular charger at the base, but I'd be worried about screwing something up in the drone. I'm not certain, but I think my drone batteries can't even be recharged while in use.
The situation might be entirely different with a less expensive drone. 73, Dave AB7E On 10/3/2022 1:15 PM, Lyn Norstad wrote:
Dave - How about using a two conductor cable and a DC Power Injector to both feed power to the drone and serve as an antenna? 73 Lyn, WØLEN -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Gilbert Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2022 5:02 PM To: Elecraft Subject: [Elecraft] Portable Vertical Antennas The curious thing is that small consumer drones are getting to the point where for operations like SOTA, a drone with a couple of spare batteries could pretty easily support a full size 5/8 wire vertical fed against a couple of radial wires suspended a foot or two off the ground, and do so long enough to make quite a few contacts. Just support the bottom of the vertical and its feedpoint so that the drone only had to support the vertical wire and nothing else. Use a few feet of twine at the top to keep the drone away from the RF voltage at the end of the wire. Drones these days will even automatically hold their position in a 20 mph wind, although of course the more wind the less battery time. I've even seen videos of SOTA guys who brought along a drone to record their operation ... the extra weight is minimal. 73, Dave AB7E ______________________________________________________________ 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 Message delivered to [email protected]
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