For travels afar, meaning not driving, I have taken to carrying a Buddipole
(BP) with whatever rig. Though Pegasus is great at QTH and club, its usually a
FT-817 or K2 for travels. After making many an antenna, I found it quite nice
to setup a BP in a room, sometimes on the balcony sometimes just setup above
the window. No AT required, change the taps on the BP coils and length of whip
to change bands.
Can homebrew it with some parts from W3FF or buy whole thing from
www.buddipole.com.
Tripod isn't necessary, take a couple cow ankle straps to lash the BP to a
chair, table, or balcony railing. Newer design with even smaller arms is yet
more portable ! And PAC-12 antenna would be my second choice, but on road
don't prefer to deal with radials or counterpoise wire or AT, just setup and
operate (mainly PSK so taps are at low end of 20m by default). Sometimes even
bring along a small amp such as the venerable TenTec 405. Not so compact, but
still a fine small HF amp !
And when even taking the rig isn't possible, sure is nice to be able to get
online and do some hamming on W4MQ or W7DXX and growing number of Internet
Remote Bases (IRB) or even Echolink on the accessible HFpack frequencies !
Cheers & 73 de Mark W4CHL
PS - no commercial connection, just a satisfied customer !
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