[Elecraft] Portable antnennas

[Gary Hinson]

How about making a homebrew multiband vertical for $not very much at all,
one that will literally fit in your pocket?  

Use a steel tape measure as the vertical radiator, with the body of the
measure lofted into the sky using a very low tech "bit of string" hanging
over the branch of a tree.  Run out a few radials on the ground beneath, and
feed with a short run of coax to your Elecraft exciter.  Pull or slacken the
string to adjust the length and get it to resonate and radiate on whichever
band you are using (you may be lucky if the body of the measure is heavy
enough to reel itself down when you release the string, but a safer method
uses a complete loop of string over the support, attached to the tape
measure body, so you can pull it either way).  

A 10m tape measure will do for 7MHz and up, provided you can find a sky hook
at least 10m up (palm trees in the tropics are about 15m high, I guess).  If
your tape is only 8m long (most are, here in NZ), simply add an extension -
a couple of metres of wire on the free end of the tape - and connect that to
your coax.  For 80m, if you have a 20m sky hook, you can extend the radiator
by adding another 10m of wire on the bottom end, or simply use the length of
wire as an inverted-L over whatever skyhook you can muster, the higher the
better.

Spring steel is not an ideal conductor but it's good enough, especially as
you will have /P and perhaps an exotic prefix for "gain"!

I think of this as the poor man's Steppir vertical.  If the aforementioned
palm tree is dangling over the sea on a tropical island, your $negligible
investment will amaze you.

There's a paper describing a slightly more sophisticated version on the web
- Google "Fat Max antenna" (Fat Max being the brand name of the tape measure
he used).  

73
Gary  ZL2iFB


> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-
> bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Mark Tellez
> Sent: Monday, January 13, 2014 13:14
> To: Elecraft at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: [Elecraft] Portable antnennas
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I would like to get some advice - based on experience - regarding the
various
> portable antenna options there are currently available on the market.  I
am
> considering the buddipole system, super antenna, chameleon, and others.  I
> am interested in hearing about performance and quality/ durability of the
> construction.  I am not going to be backpacking with the antenna but
> portability and ease of setup is a consideration.  I will be operating
from 6m
> all the way through 80m.
> 
> Thanks to all in advance.
> 
> Mark
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