Another thing you could use is an idea similar to one of my first operations
from home. I used a cushcraft 3 el 6m beam and cushcraft 5el 144, 5 el 432
antenna (on one boom, fed with one feedline a-270-10s ~$99) and the boom of
an old cushcraft 40m beam as the mast. I put this up against my 6'
chainlink fence and turned it by the armstrong rotor. I setup a picnic
table with the rig and operated field-day style. Even though the antennas
were at 20', I was able to work plenty of stations on all bands. At that
time several CO stations were 40 over here and I worked them no problem with
the 706Mk2G.
If you want even less effort and something that will work while you drive M2
and others (available at AES, etc) have loops and masts for those loops for
mobile mounting.
K8CC and I have tried a couple of times to use a 5/8 wave mobile on 6m/2m
and it just doesn't work. We heard a few really weak signals and those
people could not hear us at all (very frustrating :-(). When we stopped and
put up a simple 3 el 6 or 5 el 2m at around 15', the stations were much
louder and heard us the first call, plus we heard all the people we couldn't
hear on the vertical. I refer to the 5/8 wave vertical on 6m as an
air-cooled-dummy-load. Sure it matches but working someone is an adventure.
I would hate to see people get turned off to vhf/uhf because of bad
experiences with using dummy-loads as antennas. VHF/UHF antennas are small,
light and cheap (well ones for this purpose anyway)... get the right stuff
and have more fun. With the right simple antennas you can have a lot of fun
without spending too much money. There is still time to acquire and install
stuff before the contest.
73 Tim K9TM
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