[Lowfer] TAG on the air for testing

[John Andrews]

Jay,

> Okay.  I'll bite... (pun intended)... What is your TX antenna?

It's a loop antenna that would appear to meet the Part 15 requirements
without any interpretation. I'm doing it as an experiment.

The antenna is diamond-shaped, with a perimeter of 15 meters (four 12 foot
sides). The bottom of the antenna is about 8 feet off the ground, and the
the top is hung from a rope looped over the crotch of a tree. The other two
corners are tied off to nearby trees. The plane of the loop is roughly on a
60/240 degree (true) line, putting you right in the maximum.

The antenna itself is four #8 copper wires in a cage, held apart about 2.5
inches on center with PVC spreaders. The four wires are connected together
at the end of the loop, but otherwise separated. The RF impedance measured
about 0.2 +j18 this afternoon. I'd love to get the resistance lower, but I
think the ground and the nearby trees are a big component of that. At this
point, the antenna current is about 2 amps, giving about 800 milliwatts into
the antenna terminals.

The idea behind all of this is to see if a strictly legal antenna can be run
successfully from a wooded area with no ground system at all. My early
conclusion is that it can, assuming you don't set your expectations too
high. I've got some more playing to do, hopefully next weekend, but I
suspect the signal-level improvements will not be great.

John Andrews, W1TAG