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
______________________________________________________________