[SFDXA] John Ellis NP2B - SK

[Bill]

I copied this from John's QRZ page. John was well known to SFDXA older 
members. He attended many meetings - Bill W2CQ

https://www.qrz.com/db/NP2B

Originally licensed in 1957 as K0MMI in Kansas City, I have held the 
calls W5RPI (Houston) and W4MRJ (Atlanta).

My XYL (Jeanette - KB4XO, formerly NP2C) and I lived on the island of 
St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands from 1988 to 2012. We now live in a 
retirement community called "The Villages" in north central Florida. 
"The Villages" is a very large development with a population of over 
130,000 and over 65,000 homes, numerous golf courses and is known to be 
the worlds largest golf cart community with golf carts being a very 
common mode of transportation. (go to YouTube, key in "villages golf 
carts" and you can see a corny video that was aired on CBS in May of 2011!)

Getting back to ham hadio, my interests include building equipment, 
having schedules with friends, and working DX. My favorite phone band is 
17 meters. I was also the "Caribbean contact" in the WA2XSY 60M (5 MHz) 
pilot project. I also function as a Net Control for the Maritime Mobile 
Service Net on 14.300 and work as a Net Controller on the Hurricane 
Watch Net which is active during storms on 14.325 and 7.268 MHz.

I also have interests in contests, but primarily in hosting them in a 
multi-single or multi-multi category. I have limited patience saying 
"5908 - good luck in the contest", 5908 times in a 48 hour period by 
myself! There was a lot of that 5908 stuff (signal being 59 from zone 8 
in the CQ Worldwide DX Contest) when we hosted contests in the Virgin 
Islands, but not up here in Florida where we are severely antenna 
restricted.

I have served as a Director in the St. Croix Yacht Club (no, we don't 
have a yacht - never had one and never expect to have one!), President 
of the Kennehoochee Radio Club (Atlanta area), President of the Atlanta 
Radio Club (many - many years ago), President of the St. Croix Amateur 
Radio Club and currently serving on the Board of Directors of the 
Villages Amateur Radio Club. I also served eight terms (16 years) as the 
ARRL Section Manager for the Virgin Islands section. And, while not 
taking part in any of the aforementioned activities, I worked as a 
federal trustee, taking care of Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 bankruptcies in 
the Territory (St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix) as well as Puerto 
Rico and occasionally in the States.

Today, since moving to the Villages, lots of things have changed. The 
Villages is a very antenna restricted community, you won't find any 
towers or HF yagis here. Instead you will find people using antennas in 
the attic, motorized screwdriver type antennas and flagpoles. The 
flagpole seems to be quite popular using one of the new weatherproof 
autotuners at the base and an extensive ground radial system generally 
installed by the folks who put in the invisible dog fences. They have 
machines that can dig a very narrow trench in which they lay the radial 
wires, and then cover them up so next morning you'll never know anything 
ever happened!

We have a couple of Tarheel 100HP (high power) screwdriver antennas 
mounted to the aluminum frame of the lanai in the back of the house. The 
frame is a rather large structure, well grounded and it forms a good 
ground plane for the verticals, and with some power, they work 
surprisingly well. But the secret to effective use of these antennas is 
to make sure they have a good counterpoise or ground plane. Without 
that, they won't work worth a toot! The ones we have are also black in 
color with flat black powder coated whips so unless you are looking for 
them and know where to look, you'll never see them from the street!

I have written a number of "classic radio" articles for QST, but in the 
September 2017 issue, I wrote an article on the construction of a 
flagpole antenna. There is nothing special about the flagpole antenna I 
described except for the use of the acetal rod as the center insulator 
and for enhanced base support. That rod is tough, and you could damage a 
perfectly good truck by trying to break it!

Jeanette did not particularly like the landscaping around the house, so 
in mid March of 2018 we had the front of the place "relandscaped" and I 
took the opportunity to finally install a flagpole of our own! We've got 
about 30 radials buried, ranging in length from 15 to 40 feet and it is 
installed right in the middle of the front lawn! Now, how's that for 
hiding an antenna in plain sight?! It works fine, certainly not like the 
antenna farm we had on St. Croix, but quite useable in this antenna 
restricted community. Not that much better than the Tarheel verticals 
which we still have up, which only reinforces my position on the 
absolute importance of a good counterpoise when using a conventional 
vertical antenna.

The rest of the rig includes the Elecraft K3 line including the K3S 
transceiver, the KPA-500 power amp, the KAT-500 autotuner, the W2 
wattmeter (used on the input of the amp) and the P3 panadapter. Jeanette 
also has a K3S at her desk and we have a Yaesu FT-897 that we use 
primarily on VHF, UHF and as a backup on HF with a Signalink computer 
interface for the digital modes.

I plan to post photos of the antenna installation here, illustrating 
that amateur radio antennas can co-exist within communities with strong 
CCR's (covenants, conditions and restrictions).

And for those of you in the States, please go to the ARRL website 
(arrl.org) and review the League's position on the Amateur Radio Parity 
Act. The act as written was far from perfect and is currently being 
"reformulated" for the lack of a better term for it. Once complete and 
hopefully with congressional approval and the President's signature, it 
should help insure that those of us who live in antenna restricted 
communities, at least have a reasonable chance of erecting useable 
outside antenna systems.

Thank you for visiting my QRZ page.
73,
John
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