[Cliffdwellers] hi

[Mike W. Burger]

I am not sure what magazine I saw it in, but a fellow used an
old catamaran in the ocean out back of his house.  The mast was
loaded as a vertical and worked against the ocean as a ground
plane.  Similar to the mobile idea.  Of course having a beach
house helps.

We have a local ham who goes out on Sunday mornings, parks
in nice location near the beach, whips out one of those HUGE
multi-mag mounts and sets it in the center of his roof.  And
then has a collection of IronHorse sticks for his favorite
bands to screw in.  He sits there and logs DX for a couple
of hours.  Those who are antenna-challenged should not overlook
the wonders of mobile.  When NOT mobile, you can even put the
antenna right in the center of the roof where it works best
and laugh off the fact it sticks up 7 feet above the roof of
our car.  Operate from the passenger side.  Not a bad shack.
Extremely nice if you have a old boxy large van truck!

In Oklahoma I used to set up invisible antennas.  I discovered
that magnet wire, which can be ripped from any old TV transformer,
is virtually invisible against a sky.  It can be only 8 feet off the
ground and even though one might reach up and touch it, you can
find it hard to see standing right under it looking up.  I had
a "launcher", a point on the eves of the rental house with the
coax going down to the tuner and the counterpoise wires and safety
ground stakes inconspicously hidden.  When I needed an antenna I
would strip off a bit of the mag coating, tie it into the insulator
at the launch point, hook it up with the aligator clip and head off
across lawns.  When I got to a nice tree, I would toss up the little
string carrying weight, fast the broken off mag wire through an
insulator made of half a bic ballpoint pen barrel.  Clear, with
holes melted with a needled heated in a candle flame and cleaned
with a knife.  Nylon fishing line on the other side secured it to
the tree and a few rubber bands were used to make shock chords in
the fishing line to accomodate some tree sway.  A versatile tuner
and the decent counterpoise/ground system made it all tunable.
Wire was free so when done it could just be ripped down, wadded
up and thrown away.  One core would make hundreds of antennas.