RE: [HCDX] Vertical antennas

[Don Moore <mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Another simple alternative is the helical vertical. When I lived
in Honduras in the early 1980s, I had one of these wound around
a 10 meter piece of bamboo which was then tied to the side of a
palm tree (which probably also acted as an antenna). It worked
great except when a palm frond fell every six weeks or so,
usually breaking my lead-in. 

I also had one for several years here in Iowa until it came down
in a storm about a year ago. That consisted of 60 meters of
insulated wire wound around a 10 foot (approx 3 meter) length of
PVC. The windings were spaced about one to two cm apart (I
wasn't very exact) and secured with black electrical tape every
several windings. At the center of the back of my garage, where
the roof peaked, I nailed a standard 8 foot 2x2 board so that
half the board was nailed into the garage and the other half was
above the garage. The antenna PVC was then slipped about one
meter inside another slightly larger PVC and bolted and then
this was carefully lifted up and slipped down over the 2x2,
which it fit snuggly. I attached 3 radials that also served as
guy wires, and brought it in through a coax lead-in. It seemed
to work a little better going through a 10:1 balun. 

This antenna was generally my best antenna on the
mid-frequencies, especially 31 & 25 meters and 8 MHz utes. At
one point I had a total of five antennas up and this one was
usually the second best. It never beat out one of the two 125
meter mini-beverages on the lower frequencies & it rarely beat
out a 5 meter wire that worked well on the high frequencies.
Still, a good all-around antenna for SW purposes. Never used it
for MW, though.


=====
Don Moore     mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx
Radio: http://donmoore.tripod.com  <-------NEW URL
Family History: http://members.xoom.com/patepluma
General: http://donmoore.tripod.com/mainmenu.htm

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