[Elecraft] Portable Vertical Antennas

[David Gilbert]

I've thought about that for the folks doing DXpeditions, like for a full 
size 160m vertical, but the problem is that most drones sophisticated 
enough for GPS positioning have REALLY intelligent batteries.  The ones 
in my drone (DJI MAvic Air 2) automatically keep track of the number of 
recharges they've had, and they will even self-discharge to about 60% 
after three days of non-use so that the batteries don't suffer from 
storage at full charge.  It might be possible to run multiconductor wire 
to handle all of the connections and then use the regular charger at the 
base, but I'd be worried about screwing something up in the drone.  I'm 
not certain, but I think my drone batteries can't even be recharged 
while in use.

The situation might be entirely different with a less expensive drone.

73,
Dave   AB7E


On 10/3/2022 1:15 PM, Lyn Norstad wrote:
> Dave -
>
> How about using a two conductor cable and a DC Power Injector to both feed power to the drone and serve as an antenna?
>
> 73
> Lyn, WØLEN
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of David Gilbert
> Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2022 5:02 PM
> To: Elecraft
> Subject: [Elecraft] Portable Vertical Antennas
>
>
> The curious thing is that small consumer drones are getting to the point
> where for operations like SOTA, a drone with a couple of spare batteries
> could pretty easily support a full size 5/8 wire vertical fed against a
> couple of radial wires suspended a foot or two off the ground, and do so
> long enough to make quite a few contacts.  Just support the bottom of
> the vertical and its feedpoint so that the drone only had to support the
> vertical wire and nothing else.  Use a few feet of twine at the top to
> keep the drone away from the RF voltage at the end of the wire.  Drones
> these days will even automatically hold their position in a 20 mph wind,
> although of course the more wind the less battery time.
>
> I've even seen videos of SOTA guys who brought along a drone to record
> their operation ... the extra weight is minimal.
>
> 73,
> Dave   AB7E
>
>
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