jonny290
Member
Oh lawd, what a change.
Saturday night at 1am. I'm wide awake with nothing to do. "Hmm," I say. "What's out in the garage?"
Hey, cool. 35 feet of two pair phone cable. Hmm, the pairs are blue and green. BLUE AND GREEN? That means sky and tree camo!
Let me preface this by saying that I hate 75 meters. I hate it because it is the place to be right now in the cycle, and I fail at life, and didn't go to college, and as such I rent now instead of owning like I should, and I live on a very hip but also very small city lot that already looks like an aluminum factory puked on the roof due to my satellite and VHF/UHF antennas. Not to mention that my backyard is bisected by the 220v feed. Nice planning for me, you jerks.
But, what the hey, I say. I can put up a wire, confirm that I can't make a contact or hear anybody, and then pull it down and make a 30m vertical with the guts.
So, a'strippin I went. 10 minutes later I had two runs of wire (I didn't untwist the pairs, i shorted conductors together) and soldered together, I had one run just suitable for a quarter wave at 75m. Now how to feed?
Out in the backyard, I've got a dog of a vertical. It's a Hy-gain AV18VS. Basically 18 feet of metal stick with a series coil in the feedpoint. Change the tap on the coil, tune it a bit. It's terrible at 80 and 40, actually quite good on higher bands. I've got about 15 radials down for this in a weird arc, and the thing's mounted on about 120 feet of chainlink fence. There's my feedpoint. Since the feedpoint is right at the AV-18's feedpoint on the fence, when I want to go 80m, I just unclip the tap from the AV-18's coil, and clip it onto my 'phone' or 'cw' position on the coil. Go in, good to go.
So, here I am, it's 3 in the morning, and I'm throwing bottles of water with twine tied to them into trees. (Less danger, enough mass and I don't have any more blown up deep well sockets to use.) Good thing I live in a crazy urban area and there are random drunks everywhere - my antics look vanilla in comparison.
The wire gets up at the highest about 27, 28 feet in the crook of a tree. I just used some line with a loop in the end, ran the antenna wire through it (no tight connection here so the wire can swing) and pulled it through/up. The feedpoint's five feet off ground, the far end gets tied off in the top branch of our front yard bush (again with the water bottles over trees, you) about 12 feet off the ground. The 'feedpoint leg' is about 30 degrees off vertical, enough so that if I'm drunk and lean a bit it's giving me a little bit of vertical polarization, and the far leg slopes down at about 15 degrees.
Now, I know you can't have an antenna to play on the whole band with. My thinking is to tune it for phone, then build a small series coil to hang off the feedpoint. I can feed it at the end of the coil, tune that for the CW/digi band.
So, off I go for initial tuning.
Wow, this thing resonates at 3.35 mhz. Snip, snip, snip. 3.45. Making progress. Snip, snip, snip. 3.6. Jeez, there's four feet of wire on the ground already. Snip, snip. 3.75. Check the band edge - 1.5 SWR at 3950. Close, but our state net is 3987.5. Snip. 3.8 dead on. 1.5 SWR at 3725 and 4000 KHz. Now for the coil adjustment....hmm, a little high, add a few turns. Little low, cut one off. Snip one more, BAM. 1.5 SWR at 3525 and 3750. Welp, that's the band! Not bad for only one switch needing to be thrown, and for a pair of AWG 22 conductors.
Now, all of this silly narration for what? Because I"m absolutely GOBSMACKED at how much of an improvement this is. For the first time in a year I've been able to check into the Arkansas 75m net, with a strong 59 report no less, and I hear every. single. checkin. NVIS (short range skywave) through OK/AR/KS/MO is awesome, and I have nailed QSO's in seven states in about four casual hours since the antenna's been up.
So, the moral of the story - even if you don't think you can throw up a real antenna, be resourceful. Find junk, use it. Use your surroundings to your advantage. Don't be too afraid to try out an antenna. I was worried that my landlord would gripe, but then I stepped back to the front curb and realized that even I was having trouble finding the wire, and since our neighborhood's skyline is 70% trees and 20% above-ground power lines, it tricks the eye into thinking that it's just some weird far-off wire. The blue, green and white (on the second conductor) blend in almost perfectly with the skyline.
I now have enough signal that I get S7 background noise on an empty frequency. As such I can engage my attenuator and RF gain down a bit; copy on ragchews is so much better, it's shocking.
dumb question - where do people cq on 75? heh.
Saturday night at 1am. I'm wide awake with nothing to do. "Hmm," I say. "What's out in the garage?"
Hey, cool. 35 feet of two pair phone cable. Hmm, the pairs are blue and green. BLUE AND GREEN? That means sky and tree camo!
Let me preface this by saying that I hate 75 meters. I hate it because it is the place to be right now in the cycle, and I fail at life, and didn't go to college, and as such I rent now instead of owning like I should, and I live on a very hip but also very small city lot that already looks like an aluminum factory puked on the roof due to my satellite and VHF/UHF antennas. Not to mention that my backyard is bisected by the 220v feed. Nice planning for me, you jerks.
But, what the hey, I say. I can put up a wire, confirm that I can't make a contact or hear anybody, and then pull it down and make a 30m vertical with the guts.
So, a'strippin I went. 10 minutes later I had two runs of wire (I didn't untwist the pairs, i shorted conductors together) and soldered together, I had one run just suitable for a quarter wave at 75m. Now how to feed?
Out in the backyard, I've got a dog of a vertical. It's a Hy-gain AV18VS. Basically 18 feet of metal stick with a series coil in the feedpoint. Change the tap on the coil, tune it a bit. It's terrible at 80 and 40, actually quite good on higher bands. I've got about 15 radials down for this in a weird arc, and the thing's mounted on about 120 feet of chainlink fence. There's my feedpoint. Since the feedpoint is right at the AV-18's feedpoint on the fence, when I want to go 80m, I just unclip the tap from the AV-18's coil, and clip it onto my 'phone' or 'cw' position on the coil. Go in, good to go.
So, here I am, it's 3 in the morning, and I'm throwing bottles of water with twine tied to them into trees. (Less danger, enough mass and I don't have any more blown up deep well sockets to use.) Good thing I live in a crazy urban area and there are random drunks everywhere - my antics look vanilla in comparison.
The wire gets up at the highest about 27, 28 feet in the crook of a tree. I just used some line with a loop in the end, ran the antenna wire through it (no tight connection here so the wire can swing) and pulled it through/up. The feedpoint's five feet off ground, the far end gets tied off in the top branch of our front yard bush (again with the water bottles over trees, you) about 12 feet off the ground. The 'feedpoint leg' is about 30 degrees off vertical, enough so that if I'm drunk and lean a bit it's giving me a little bit of vertical polarization, and the far leg slopes down at about 15 degrees.
Now, I know you can't have an antenna to play on the whole band with. My thinking is to tune it for phone, then build a small series coil to hang off the feedpoint. I can feed it at the end of the coil, tune that for the CW/digi band.
So, off I go for initial tuning.
Wow, this thing resonates at 3.35 mhz. Snip, snip, snip. 3.45. Making progress. Snip, snip, snip. 3.6. Jeez, there's four feet of wire on the ground already. Snip, snip. 3.75. Check the band edge - 1.5 SWR at 3950. Close, but our state net is 3987.5. Snip. 3.8 dead on. 1.5 SWR at 3725 and 4000 KHz. Now for the coil adjustment....hmm, a little high, add a few turns. Little low, cut one off. Snip one more, BAM. 1.5 SWR at 3525 and 3750. Welp, that's the band! Not bad for only one switch needing to be thrown, and for a pair of AWG 22 conductors.
Now, all of this silly narration for what? Because I"m absolutely GOBSMACKED at how much of an improvement this is. For the first time in a year I've been able to check into the Arkansas 75m net, with a strong 59 report no less, and I hear every. single. checkin. NVIS (short range skywave) through OK/AR/KS/MO is awesome, and I have nailed QSO's in seven states in about four casual hours since the antenna's been up.
So, the moral of the story - even if you don't think you can throw up a real antenna, be resourceful. Find junk, use it. Use your surroundings to your advantage. Don't be too afraid to try out an antenna. I was worried that my landlord would gripe, but then I stepped back to the front curb and realized that even I was having trouble finding the wire, and since our neighborhood's skyline is 70% trees and 20% above-ground power lines, it tricks the eye into thinking that it's just some weird far-off wire. The blue, green and white (on the second conductor) blend in almost perfectly with the skyline.
I now have enough signal that I get S7 background noise on an empty frequency. As such I can engage my attenuator and RF gain down a bit; copy on ragchews is so much better, it's shocking.
dumb question - where do people cq on 75? heh.
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I'll probably be shooting you a few questions via PM in the near future.
