Years ago I tried a a weather balloon filled with hydrogen from a hired canister. The balloon's spherical shape made it highly susceptible to being disturbed by even a fairly mild breeze. In my case the vertical wire was tilted well away from being vertical. Fairly soon the balloon met the branch of what was a pretty distant tree. Pop! Down came the wire and the ARRL Topband contest which had just begun was finished (quite respectably, I should add) with a center-fed dipole.
Now, years later, with a bit of experience in kite flying, a not-so-distant public park with lots of open space and being a dedicated QRPer, I'm tempted to try something larger than my 26m vertical + 21m horizontal wire over a 2.5 km field of in-ground radials. My thoughts are centered on a kite-supported 7/8 wavelength vertical, the 4/8 wavelength bottom section base fed through an LC tank circuit, decoupled from the top 3/8 wavelength section by just a capacitor. 72 (QRP-speak for 73), Charles, W2SH ________________________________ From: Topband <[email protected]> on behalf of Roger Kennedy <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2018 5:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Topband: 1/2 wave inv L Many years ago, a friend of mine used to operate on 160m with vertical antennas suspended on a big Weather Balloon filled with hydrogen . . . After using Quarter-wave verticals for a few months, he changed over to Half-wave verticals . . . he found they worked much better ! He didn't have much of a radial system (due to lack of space), mainly just earth rods at the base . . . so I suspect that's one of the reasons why. Roger G3YRO _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.contesting.com%2F_topband&data=02%7C01%7C%7C6317e13ea55c4a731b3408d57722aa1a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636545913146561969&sdata=KJanhEzxlhEUZd78JcIwnmSlj7TzkR0Fpp%2FTslHA8%2FA%3D&reserved=0 _________________ Topband Reflector Archives - http://www.contesting.com/_topband
