Jimmy Lee wrote: >What antenna do you use for portable operation?
Hi Jimmy, I've been interested in portable HF operation, from campsites primarily, for about 30 years. I've tried just about everything for antennas, and wasted a lot of money on commercial vertical and loop abominations. About ten years ago I went back to the best and cheapest performer I'd ever found: A resonant dipole feed with coax. I use very flexible multi-strand 14 ga. wire in a dipole that is about 66 feet long, with NO balun at the center insulator. I've placed six insulators in each leg, with a jumper/aligator clip permanently soldered to the outboard segment at each insulator. Using this arrangement I can set up a resonant dipole for every ham band from 40 through 10 meters by connecting the jumpers across the appropriate insulators. All insulators are made from small PVC pipe. I seldom raise it above eight to ten feet, so band change only takes about a minute. Using this antenna and a TS-50S, I worked more than 40 countries (Japan through Russia through South Africa and points in between) from a campsite a few years ago during a CQWW contest. I can send a .pdf file with a detailed description, should anyone be interested be interested. 73, Mike / KK5F _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: Elecraft@mailman.qth.net 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
