[ILQSO] "Best" all round portable antenna

[Hank Greeb]

I've been operating portable for some 40 or so years. When I was a 
youngster, we bought a camper trailer after the first kid arrived. We 
didn't have much money, but we wanted to travel. Those were in the daze 
of 25¢/gal (or less) gasoline, rentals at public campgrounds were around 
$2 to $5/night, etc.

Almost every time we went out on a camping trip I took along the rig and 
"The Best all round antenna ever." I took about 30' of TV mast, four 
military surplus stakes, about 3' long and a bit over an inch in 
diameter, about 200' of rope, a bow and arrow, a fishing rod, reel, and 
line, some light string, and an antenna made from 65' of house wiring, 
from which I stripped two wires of 65' each (remember I didn't have 
money for nice stranded copper antenna wire) and made a 130' center fed 
dipole. For insulators I used plastic drainpipe fittings (again, very 
cheep, but very good insulators). I first used 300 ohm TV twin lead, 
because it was cheep, then granulated to 450 ohm transmitting twin lead. 
When trees were available, as they often were, I'd string a fishline 
over the trees, and then the string, and then the rope with the antenna 
attached. If the trees weren't 130' apart, I'd shorten the dipole. The 
tuner was a homemade balanced tuner, with manual taps, with which I was 
able to tune most anything. Later I found a small Johnson Matchbox and 
have been using it ever since...

The "best" camping experience was when we rented a cabin in Lake Hope 
State Park, Vinton County, Ohio, in 1977 or 78. We rented a cabin 
because the inlaws were visiting and it would have been very crowded in 
the camping trailer. Anyway, there were two trees, about 70' tall 
(optimum for an 80 metre dipole), but only 100 feet or so apart. I 
shortened the dipole to 65 feet by bending the ends toward each other, 
strung the antenna at about 65' level, and had the "best" signal reports 
I ever got from a portable setup.

More typically the trees have been 30 feet high, or so, and sometimes 
none available. When no trees are available, as was the case in the 
recent ILQP, I strung the 80 meter dipole at 32' as an inverted V, using 
the two ends of the dipole as guy wires, and a rope for the third guy. 
The included angle, looking from the top, was 120° - I didn't do the 
solid geometry to figure the actual included angle at the apex. This 
works quite well. In my daze as a traffic handler, I worked W6EOT on a 
TCC sked using this antenna from various camping sites in the eastern 
Untied States, and we never missed a sked.

Very low NVIS antenna are "okay" if you ain't got anything better, but 
ground absorption is very high. At a quarter wave up, antenna books tell 
me that much of the radiation will be going straight up. Absorption is 
still a problem, but generally when camping one doesn't have enough room 
for a good ground curtain. I haven't verified this with side by side 
experiments, but I do know that I always get "reasonable" reports during 
state QSO parties. The antenna is simple, foolproof, and easy to erect.

Try it, and you'll like it.

73 de n8xx Hg

p.s. My home antenna is a center fed dipole, for years it was 260 feet 
long, fed with 450Ω feedline, 60' in the center, and about 30' on the ends.