[Antennas] Mobile Antennas - which shoots best, is strongest?

Fri Jun 16 23:30:47 EDT 2006

Name is Bill.

The Shakespeare vertical I have is not that current 222 boat vertical, but 
rather the mil. one they built for the Navy that bolts to the decks of 
ships.  It comes in two sections, tapers from 1 inch at the top to 5 inches 
at the base, has a four bolt flange at the bottom that is about 10 inches in 
diameter.  The feed point is about 24 inches up from the flange, it has 
twelve wires running up the inside of the fiberglass structure, and will 
handle 10 kW.  Weighs about 80 pounds.  It will handle two 3x4 flags nicely.

The tuner is right at the base of the antenna...mounted on the concrete... 
and the feed wire is about 24 inches long #6 solid copper wire.  The tuner 
is covered by bushes and is fed with 7/8" heliax that is out about 70 feet 
from the house.  There are two ground rods (one for the vertical and one for 
the tuner), and the radial counterpoise of #6 wire in a 6 foot diameter 
circle that the radials connect to at the base.  there are 225 #12 radials 
connected to the counterpoise that were buried in my yard using my patented 
radial burying device.

I suppose we all could devise other stealth antennas that work better...but 
I have not seen one yet.

I have a good story to go with this:  While I was burying the radials for 
the antenna... my neighbor came out and asked why I was burying wire in my 
yard.  We have moles here so I said "well, its to keep the moles out of my 
yard!"... to which he promptly said "well, when you finish... can you put 
some down in my yard too?!!!!!".... so I just extended my radials into his 
yard!

Sincerely,

Dr. William J. Schmidt, II  K9HZ
Trustee of the North American QRO - Central Division Club - K9ZC

Email: bill at wjschmidt.com
WebPage: www.wjschmidt.com

"If you drink... don't drive.  Don't even putt"  - Dean Martin.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David J. Ring, Jr." <n1ea at arrl.net>
To: <Antennas at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 12:57 AM
Subject: Re: [Antennas] Mobile Antennas - which shoots best, is strongest?

> Hello Doc - you don't give me a short name in your signature, so I'll use
> this!
>
> Thirty-three foot - the shorter version of the Marine thirty-five foot 
> whip?
> How neat - it would work 40 meters without a tuner.
>
> That sounds like a great install.
>
> Did you bury the ATU?  I guess you'd have to put it inside a vented box 
> and
> put a rubber hose to a descrete place so you could fill pressurize it with
> nitrogen and keep the moisture out.
>
> My fallback plan (more visible) was a Hy-Tower and a base mounted SAILOR
> marine ATU-1500 tuner.
>
> You know what I noticed?  I had several antennas on my ship, so I used a 
> 35
> Sheakespere whip fed with coax and ran it into my cabin, and I tuned it 
> with
> a small MFJ tuner.
>
> One Christmas, I was near Singapore and I really wanted to get a phone 
> patch
> home - K4HAX ran a 4 element 204BA HYGAIN yagi with a National NCL-2000 
> amp
> running off of a pole pig - but he said I was S-3.
>
> I really wanted to go talk to my kids.  I'd been away from home too long!
>
> So I went into the R/R and turned on the HF transmitter and used the 
> Harris
> ATU to resonate the remotely tuned transmitter whip for 14,320 kHz and 
> then
> took a 20 foot length of RG8/U as a jumper cable and put one end in the 
> ATU
> input and the other, I ran to my stateroom.
>
> Now with my Ten-Tec Triton 2, I was S-7.
>
> Same length of antenna, but this appeared to be the efficiency difference 
> of
> matching the antenna at the base, as opposed to running 30 feet of
> mismatched RG213/U to my stateroom and then using a small MFJ tuner.
>
> Do you think using the vacuum variable in the Harris ATU and matching the 
> 35
> foot marine whip directly at the base could account for all that 
> difference?
>
> Have you experience anything like that?
>
> I liked the system your running (the same as on the ship) but I found the
> bandwidth and matching really touchy below around 2.5 MHz.  It was super
> touchy down around 1650 kHz.  Some of the guys had a big egg-beater top 
> hat
> so they could use it all the way down to 410 kHz - "in theory" it was
> supposed to be efficient there, but it was several S units down from a
> standard "Twin-T Marconi" or an Inverted-L antenna.
>
> I'm sure Jack Painter, would love to get his finals on that system you 
> have!
>
> 73
>
> David Ring, N1EA
> =30=
>
> 73
>
> David N1EA
>
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