> On 7/30/2012 8:32 PM, bills stuff wrote:
>> >The plan is to develop a simple, relatively inexpensive, relatively
>> >light weight and shippable/airline transportable 160 antenna kit for one
>> >man quick deployment for modest DXpeditions or contributed for use by
>> >resident hams in rare-ish (for 160 m) locations.The ability to make
>> >adjustments to actual deployments to provide matching is important since
>> >such antennas are famously variable due to soil and local obstruction
>> >environment and there should not be a need for antenna matching
>> >hardware, especially at the planned higher powers.
I think I had perhaps one of the simplest and most effective 160 meter
antennas for an island hoping DX-pedition through the parts the
Caribbean islands and SA in the 60's. Here is what I used with a 100
watt rig and was thrilled at the performance.
(1) 130 feet of 300 ohms twin lead with the far one end shorted and
pulled up over a coconut by a local climber $5 US max and connected to a
small nylon line for adjustment in an inverted or sloping fashion back
to my hotel room on the beach. (without the local climber bring along a
slingshot fishing line launcher.) If the hotel wasn't right on the beach
or had any 70 foot palms I just drove to another one that did. Masting
anything up beyond 50 feet by yourself just forget it. Palm trees are
great substitutes. I think this antenna was describe for 160 in Bill
Orr's (W6SAI) firsts handbooks.
(2) Since most resorts had copper water piping (now it is almost all
PVC) that provided the ground connection or a lightweight run of RG-59
went to the twin lead connected by one side to a ground stake and the
other to the hot side.
(3) Today's rigs with auto tuners should have no problem in feeding
this set up. Back there was no internet, DSL's, routers and modems.
Today things are different a longer coax (RG-8x) may be advisable in
getting this away from the noise sources. My radio for top band back
then were a pair of Drake Twins and with today's radios ad switching
supplies all of this could fit in a carry one with room to spare for a
laptop for logging and some a 500 wire rolls for a Beverage. If you
can't get up a Beverage tie some of the wire on rocks and pitch them
into the waters to enhance your ground connection or just run out some
radials under the sand.
I think the point I am trying to make is that if you have a good
DX-pedition QTH picked out in advance which you can even Google Earth as
needed, this idea would work well. However, if you don't end up in a
good location there isn't anything that you could carry along on a plane
that would change much of this unless you are willing to pay huge cargo
and brokerage charges.
Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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