TopBand: Home Depot Special

[Trey Garlough]

The Home Depot Special is a 1/4-wave piece of #16 stranded wire 
(black insulation), suspended from a tall tree (a small sequoia
sempervirens), with four 1/4-wave radials elevated as high as NJ2L 
can reach while standing on his toes.  The tree is about 1/5-wave 
in height, so visualize the antenna as a "sloping vertical".

Home Depot is the name of the hardware store in Salinas (birthplace 
of the American writer John Steinbeck) where I bought the spool of 
wire.  K6NA has since advised that the antenna would have a better 
kharmic balance if I had bought a spool of wire at a surplus store.  
Live and learn.

Next three projects:

1) Build a half-scale version of the same antenna for 3.5 MHz
   (I have no antenna for that band at the moment)

2) Put up an RX antenna -- all stations worked so far have been
   using the HD-Speical on RX;  for my first attempt I'm going
   to try a 580' Europe beverage (no EU QSOs yet)

3) Add more radials to the HD-Special if anyone can convince me 
   it will *really* make a difference

--Trey, N5KO

--
FAQ on WWW:               http://www.contesting.com/topband.html
Submissions:              topband@contesting.com
Administrative requests:  topband-REQUEST@contesting.com
Sponsored by Akorn Access, Inc & N4VJ / K4AAA