Ken wrote: >...I would like to construct a good portable antennae to use while camping
I have played around with multi-band HF antennas for camping and backpacking for more than 30 years. I've tried resonant dipoles with and without traps, untuned dipoles fed with balanced line, simple and complex verticals, fed-fed wires, etc. I have never found anything that works as well as the least-expensive of the above...the resonant dipole. I have never found anything that works as poorly as verticals. Portable verticals, lacking a very good ground system, are very poor in performance compared to a dipole, if a side-by-side comparison at the same site and the same time is done. Outrageously priced vertical "dummy loads," such as those produced under the "Outbacker" name (with that bogus "ground coupling" base) are among the very worst. Most (or all) commercial vertical offerings allow the waste of hundreds of dollars to prove that contacts can still be made using the poorest of antenna systems. For the past 20 years I've used a dipole with appropriate insulators located in each leg that can be jumpered to get a resonant dipole, without traps, on any band between 40m and 10m. I use PCV water tubing for the insulators, and flex- or super-weave wire that has withstood many set-up/take-down cycles without the first sign of wire fatique failure. It takes less than a minute to lower the antenna and alter the jumpers to change band. I have worked more than 40 countries from camp sites using this antenna less than 10 feet above ground. I can send anyone interested a small .pdf file that describes all the details and dimensions. It's all quickly home-made at very low cost. Mike / KK5F _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
