[FARC] Hamsticks - opinions please

[Jeff Fishman]

Joe,
I am planning to mount a 75M hamstick to the top of my plywood scuttle hole 
cover with a few 20 gauge wire radials laying on top of the insulation. Will 
let you know how it works (also would like to check into the MEPM).
Jeff KB3FIO
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Matthews" <dave at djmatthews.com>
To: "Frederick, Maryland ARC" <farc at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [FARC] Hamsticks - opinions please


> Hi Joe -
>
> For MEPN, an NVIS antenna may be your best bet, since the stations you're 
> trying to hit are well within a 300 mile radius.  If you're not already 
> familiar with NVIS, you can get a brief description at 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_Vertical_Incidence_Skywave
>
> Some web sties describing NVIS operation may specify various "ideal" 
> heights and dimensions, but the key thing is that you're just trying to 
> get some RF to go nearly straight up.  In practice, any wire of reasonable 
> length that's mostly horizontal and placed within a few feet of ground 
> level will probably do just fine as long as you have a way to match the 
> weird load impedance.
> I used to live in a townhouse where I needed to use a stealth antenna. 
> So, the transmitter fed an MFJ-949 tuner that fed about 40 ft of coax 
> which then connected to an end-fed 35 ft. wire that I stapled under the 
> top plate of a 6' wood privacy fence.  As an NVIS antenna this worked 
> surprisingly well for 40 and 80 meter contacts in the MD/VA/WVA/PA/DE area 
> (even using QRP).  A downside of this was having a lot of RF on the shield 
> of the coax, which occasionally caused some RF problems for other 
> equipment.  This was solved by getting an Icom AH-4 autotuner and mounting 
> it outside.
>
> Here's a link to a map, updated every 5 minutes, that shows the current 
> maximum frequency that will support an NVIS contact:
>    http://www.spacew.com/www/fof2.html
>
> Although the ideal is for stations on both sides of the contact to have 
> NVIS antennas, more often than not, just having it on one side of the path 
> works fine.  A side benefit of using an NVIS antenna is that it will 
> typically drop your received noise level quite a bit.... a very useful 
> property on 80 meters during the summer months.
>
>
> 73 de K3MV
>
>
> Joseph M. Durnal wrote:
>> I'm going to try and make a last ditch effort to get on 75 meters from
>> my town house....
>
> _______________________________________________
> FARC mailing list
> FARC at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/farc