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Home › Forums › Ideas › Antenna(s) for events

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    Antenna(s) for events

    Posted by KP4CI on 2024-11-03 at 23:16

    Recently I was asked if our ARES Team could help at a Scouting event called ‘Last Scout Standing”. It is a challenge event open to Scouts 14~17 year olds, and then 18y/o and older. It starts on a Friday night, and ends on Sunday afternoon. The participants are clueless of what they will encounter and the challenges ahead of them. The ARES Team did communication reports for the Canoe portion of the event (8 miles down the Wabash River).

    So why Antenna(s) for the event? If you are on the average terrain in Indiana, there is not problem getting into the 145.37 WIRES* repeater that has the antenna above 300ft. But at the same time, we had to communicate on Simplex, and I was down in the riverfront. About 10 feet below the average terrain. Being close to, or on the water, I took my Icom IC92AD that is water resistance, just in case!

    At last minute, I decided to make a ground plane antenna composed of a MFJ telescopic antenna for 2Meters, and small FM transistor radio antennas working as ground plane. A small piece of aluminum was molded for the support, a BNC was screwed on the center and old piece of coax with a sma connector was soldered to the BNC. All of this was supported with an old CB antenna that the wire had been removed. To not get splinters, it was wrapped with electrical tape.

    Lessons learned!

    1)Operation was a success! even though some hams where not getting well into the repeater with an HT

    2) The CB whip used is thin and to flexible. I have thicker rods that will do better.

    3)The terrain of the river is sandy enough that the whip would not stay vertical. Lucky me there was a huge drift wood that I was able to prop it up against.

    4)Communication worked fine and the antenna tuned on the two 2 Meters frequencies chosen. Just in case, a Bioenno Battery and Radio Shack 2Meter amplifier was brought along.

    This event, the downtime wile Scouts walked (and dragged) their canoes to the starting point, got me thinking of all of the events that I do, how to make this more portable, assembled with in minutes, lighter, adaptable to terrain to keep it vertical, how about if I was in a vessel (canoe, kayak, boat etc)..

    Fellow Hams, what is your thoughts? What would you do? Have you made your own antenna for a particular event?

    *WIRES in this case stands for Western Indiana Radio Emergency Service, not Yaesu WIRES system.

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    Antenna3-rotated.jpg 4 MB Image File - Click to view
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    KP4CI replied 2 months, 2 weeks ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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