[LeArc] Events of the weekend

Sun, 19 Oct 2003 21:20:58 -0500

Well... lets see... built another antenna... attempted to do the Illinois
QSO party, and did some DX...

I know that for most of the people that will get this, this stuff is old
hat, but for the few people that have never done anything like this
before....

First of all... as you all may remember, my experiment with the slinky jr
antenna did not go so well.  So I decided to build a simple (yeah right)
dipole for 20 meters.  The landlord does not have a problem with me putting
up an antenna, as long as I take it down when I am not using it.

First, the ingredients...

3 spools of magnet wire (radio shack $2.99)
1 roll of 50 foot 16-guage speaker wire (radio shack $4.99)
50 foot of RG-8U coaxial cable w/ SO-239 connectors (radio shack $19.95)
1 SO-239 barrel connector (radio shack $2.99)
1 foot (approx) of junk RG-8U coax with 1 connector (scavanged)

(I will explain these last 2 in a minute...)

The reason for the spools instead of redular insulators is the radio shack
here did not have any insulators...

Take a length of speaker wire about 18 feet and split it in the middle (why
pay for regular wire when you get twice as much with the speaker wire...).
Strip off about 1 foot of insulation from each end.  put the stripped end
through the center hole of the spool, and solder it together approx 1 inch
from insulation.  These are your end connectors.

In the middle, loop through the little hole in the spool for each end and
solder.  Connect the coax stub to this (solder the shield to one side, and
the center conductor to the other).  Then cover the connections in
electrical tape (brush on tape or coax seal would work better here).

The reason I did it like this insead of connecting the long piece of coax to
the antenna is so I can build more antennas for different bands, and use the
same coax (I am cheap).

I live on the second floor, so I connected one end outside my window, and
the other end to a volleyball pole using nylon cord.  Basically, a slopper.
One end is about 15 feet high, and the other end is about 8 feet high.  with
the low end pointing north.  The tuner in the radio takes care of the swr
change.

Granted... this isn't the greatest set up in the world, but it beats the
slinky by far.  In just a few minutes, I broke through a pile-up to TI8M in
Costa Rica (took me about 10 minutes I think), then I talked to VP5/WA4ET
after about 15 minutes of pile-up.  (Turks & Caicos Islands).  All using my
TS-450S/AT at 100W on 20 Meters.

I found the best thing about using the spools when I took the antenna down a
few minutes ago... the wire wraps around them perfect for non-messy storage.

Franklin D Wolverton
[email protected]
N9OE

What's my dynamic range on the bass trombone?   On or off.
These two tuba players walk past a bar... Well, it could happen!