[Lowfer] Repurposed antenna

[John Bruce McCreath]

When beacon EAR’s antenna fell down months ago, I repurposed a portion
of it to give me a bottom-fed sloper for receiving the lower AM broadcast
band, Navtex on 518 kHz., and the 630M amateur band.

The wire is 105 feet long, with a slope of around 45 degrees in a roughly
north-east orientation.  A base loading coil and a tapped transformer for
impedance matching are located at the old beacon EAR’s helix house.

My NanoVNA tells me that it resonates at about 600 kHz., where the SWR
is at its lowest, but it only rises to 4:1 at 474.2 kHz. on the bottom end and
at 800 kHz. at the upper end.

In the short time that it has been up, it has given me two trans-Atlantic
Navtex stations, one in the Azores and the other in the Netherlands,
and just last night the station at Santa Marta, Columbia was logged.

I’m pleased that a part of EAR lives on for a new purpose!

73, J.B., VE3EAR