Jeff,
There are a lot of things to know in order to have even a guess as to whether
your antenna will be good or not - like how tall is that tree and how far from
the sloping ground on the side of that mountain will your wire end up being?
About how far out from the container are the peaks of those mountains and what
is the average elevation of about a dozen of those peaks as compared to where
the container is located? I’m sure you have container level access to it by
road and there is an opening that isn’t blocked by tall mountains. What
direction is that?
Obviously you can match anything to have a good SWR but that doesn’t mean it’s
going to work well for you. The 200 SF top of that container doesn’t do much
to help your antenna work well. Hard to say without having a good picture of
what you have there but I would opt for having a vertical as far as possible
away from ground instead of the feedpoint coming down to the container even if
it meant having a thousand feet of feedline to it. Possible to have a
horizontal rope spanning some part of that canyon and up a hundred or more feet
from container elevation?
It’s likely that you will be trying different things to come up with the best
you can do.
Good luck. Sounds like a fun project.
73…Stan, ZF9CW/K5GO
> On Dec 18, 2025, at 11:09 AM, Radio KH6O <radio.kh6o@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Colleagues,
>
> I have an 80 acre ranch consisting of mountains and canyons. I'm developing
> one location: Rivera Canyon (34.75073, -118.55116). I've had a one-trip
> 20ft shipping container brought in, modified with windows and a residential
> door.* This will be the radio shack.
>
> This canyon is surrounded by steep mountains on each side. For 160M, I
> intend to use a 130ft wire attached to a pine tree growing on the side of a
> mountain; the angle of inclination will be about 45 degrees. The shipping
> container itself will be the counterpoise/ground -- its surface area is
> about 700 sq. ft. Grounding rods will be driven in at each corner.
>
> With this in mind, should I also extend radial wires from the container or
> will the 700 sq.ft. of surface area be sufficient?
>
> * A one-trip container is used for one ocean trip, then sold; it's free of
> rust and all pieces are welded together. Base price for a 20 footer is
> $2800: https://www.containeralliance.com/
>
> --
> 73,
> Jeff KH6O / 6
>
> NNNN
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