[Elecraft] Portable Vertical Antennas

[David Gilbert]

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