Smitty506th
Sharpshooter
- Sep 22, 2008
- 451
- 16
On the ridges you can hit K9OK (or could, I haven't been on 2m in a while). When I used to go BP with and HT on 2m I'd carry a j-pole I made out of RG-58. Easy to sling up a tree.
Sweet! How 'bout QRP from atop the Hickory Ridge Firetower? I've got a Yaesu FT-817ND and a Buddipole setup.
Anyone up for an INGO ham hike in the Deam sometime next summer? I'll take my IC-703 for HF.
I dont have a radio but i like to hike and learn if i didnt get in the way.
Here is a picture of the antenna I mentioned yesterday.
I also have several wire antennas that could be hung from the tower. Those would give us a better signal out than my vertical or the buddipole. Swatdoc, I have used buddipoles and they are a good compact antenna, but a full size wire antenna will still outperform them.
Very nice setup. That's a robust tripod. Manually tuned screwdriver design? Home-brewed or purchased? If HB it's very nicely done! Do you use a balun for impedence matching and choking off common mode currents?
Agreed! And at 33m tall we could be almost a 1/4 wave high on 160m. But, of course, the height will start to degrade performance of a dipole on higher bands. And we'd have need to have a lot of guy line, a lot of coax, and/or an end-fed design (thinking sloper here).
In the video above, you can see the design of the tower obs area would lend itself well to getting antennas up.