Finally got a HF antenna up

[chaser001]

So after upgrading to a General this past summer I finally scrapped together the money for a HF rig and my wife got me a Cobra Jr Antenna for my birthday yesterday.

I spend my afternoon yesterday trying to hang the antenna, but we had guest over so I didn't get to test it out until this afternoon. I was able to hear someone from Tasmania on 20m but he got off before I keyed up. I did have a nice QSO with someone down in AL with a 59 and I'm only pushing 100w through my Kenwood TS-480.

I think my next purchase will be an external tuner since my built in tuner won't tune the cobra on 80m or 10m but it worked on everything in between.

I would like to get the antenna up a little higher - I live on the top of a hill and from my office I'm actually looking down at it, but from the ground level it's about 40' up in the tree. I was just having such a hard time throwing my line up while wearing snowshoes.

 

[cockpitbob]

I have a fishing reel hose clamped to a wrist-rocket sling shot and routinely get it over 60' trees. I use 1oz fishing weight. Paint the weight so you can see it as a grey weight on clear fishing line is surprisingly invisible.

Bows work great for getting lines up high too. Either way your neighbors will look at you funny.

Don't worry about running only 100W. The difference between 100W and 1,500W is only 2 S-units. And with CW you can work the world on 5W. I've hit parts of Antarctica over 10K miles away with 3W CW.

Get a tuner. Make your antenna your bitch and force a tune on any band you feel like working.

 

[timbo]

Get a tuner. Make your antenna your bitch and force a tune on any band you feel like working.

I love it! Thanks for the chuckle...

In the past, I've had legal limit stations, towers, yagis...the whole shebang. I sold almost everything about 15 years ago...all I use now is an original IC706, an LDG IT-100 antenna tuner and a dipole up about 50 feet fed with 450 ohm line...I am having tons of fun with this little station, probably more fun than I did with my big station.

 

[ToddDubya]

I finally got my G5RV Jr HF antenna up last night. I don't know how you guys use slingshots and archery equipment to hang your antennas but I was just throwing a rock-in-a-sock into a tree and it was a nightmare. When I finally got it around the limb I wanted it went around every other limb and I could not get it to do what I wanted. I finally gave up and hung it as high as my ladder would reach.

I put a section of rope around the tree, attached a pulley with a carabiner, somehow managed to get the antenna through the branches of neighboring trees and hoisted it up. That was tree #1. Tree #2 was an evergreen that I put the ladder against then climbed to get to the same height as Tree #1. I had to do a little trimming here and there but was able to get a pulley setup in it as well. For counterweights I literally used grocery bags with rocks in them. I need a more permanent solution but that's the best I could do at the time. I haven't climbed a tree in decades and I have to say it was as fun as I remembered, with the exception that I had to worry about limbs being able to support my weight.

I think I got it about 25' feet in the air. It was starting to get dark and my stomach was growling so I called it for the night and made supper. I don't know if I'll have time to get on the air tonight or not; I may have to wait until Friday.

 

[Evtide]

I used a light tackle fishing rod / small lead weight / monofilament line to hang an end-fed for monitoring and 10 meters last summer. I cast the sinker over a high branch and let it fall to the ground, then tied some paracord to the sinker and reeled it back up over the branch back to me. The mono doesn't have any noticeable friction over the branch like some line would so it falls pretty much straight down. I then tied the paracord to the insulator at the end of the antenna wire and hauled it aloft with the paracord and tied it off to a stake. The 'radio' end connected to a balun screwed in to the top of a support post on my cabin porch. This stayed up all summer and worked pretty well. I left enough slack so that there weren't any issues with the tree swaying.

 

[cockpitbob]

Todd, your story sounds familiar. I'm now pretty good with my slingshot with fishing reel hose clamped to it, but it took a long time and several lost 1oz fising weights. I think my first try took 3hrs and several lost weights. I finally learned to paint my weights day-glo orange.

 

[ToddDubya]

I ran the coax into my rig tonight and I'm really enjoying just flipping through the bands listening to whatever I can hear. I'm not very good at picking up call signs so by the time I try to look them up and see where they are I already forgot what they were. I've heard some thick accents, though.

 

[cockpitbob]

I always have a pen and paper near the radio. When I'm tired I've got the attention span of a flea.

 

[ToddDubya]

I always have a pen and paper near the radio. When I'm tired I've got the attention span of a flea.

Tiredness could very well be my problem. It also doesn't help that some people blurt out their calls so fast. The first two characters are slow and clear, followed by boogedyboogedyboogedy. Kids these days.

I'm worried about how much of a curmudgeon I'll be when I'm actually old. I've always been crotchety beyond my years.

 

[cockpitbob]

I went camping with my son's patrol last night. I brought my portable HV rig and an HT to show them ham radio. I brought my slingshot/fishing reel to get the 63' end fed wire in a tree. For some reason the reel kept snagging. It took 9 tries and one lost weight. I was NOT looking like a pro. Still, the boys got to hear the New England QSO party action happening all over the world, I made a few Dx contacts for the contest, then they got to talk to some friendly locals on a repeater.