[Elecraft] RE: O.T. Antenna suggestions needed for JOTA operation.

[brian jones]

Dave
      as an JOTA operator myself (and one who was fortunate to work the UK HQ 
site GB2GP a couple of years ago) nice to hear you'll be on.

I have a 10m (33' to you colonials) fibreglass telescopic mast - its just like 
the 20' crappy poles you guys can pick up cheap but a little longer. Worked JA, 
UA9 and W6 on SSB using it from a Girl Guide (that's Girl Scouts) campsite a 
couple of weeks ago. The K2 was into 102' W5GI antenna (homebrewed by the XYL) 
at about 20', inverted V with the ends tied off at about 6' above ground. The 
crappy poles are fine for dipoles - use the dipole to tension it so it doesn't 
bend too much and either don't use the top whippy section or cut off part of  
the top section and turn it round and glue it back inside where you cut it from 
to make a slightly shorter but much stiffer section.  

W4RNL suggests a 44' doublet antenna for 40m and above so I would think that 
88' would be good for 80m and above. At home I run a 102' doublet (no reason 
except 102' is the size of my plot) with 450 ohm ladder line into a 4:1 balun 
(I have a Radioworks external balun so the XYL can run 100W QRO from the TS850) 
and a short length of coax for easy feed into the shack - the K2 (and TS850) 
tunes this fine on all bands

If the antenna is going to be inverted V then make sure the kids know not to 
touch the ends - if you can find some sort of scrub or bush then use it to get 
the ends as high off the ground as possible. If you have space tie thin rope 
(string works) to the ends of the antenna to make it longer and tie the rope to 
the scrub - that way the antenna ends are even higher off the ground. 

Good luck with the station - unfortunately Liz (M0ACL) and I won't be operating 
JOTA this year, we're planning one of those 'vacation of a lifetime's which 
will start at Pacificon on that weekend.

Brian G0UKB