Topband: THE ITINERANT 160 METER ANTENNA PROJECT

[Herb Schoenbohm]

> On 7/30/2012 8:32 PM, bills stuff wrote:
>> >The plan is to develop a simple, relatively inexpensive, relatively
>> >light weight and shippable/airline transportable 160 antenna kit for one
>> >man quick deployment for modest DXpeditions or contributed for use by
>> >resident hams in rare-ish (for 160 m) locations.The ability to make
>> >adjustments to actual deployments to provide matching is important since
>> >such antennas are famously variable due to soil and local obstruction
>> >environment and there should not be a need for antenna matching
>> >hardware, especially at the planned higher powers.
I think I had perhaps one of the simplest and most effective 160 meter 
antennas for an island hoping DX-pedition through the parts the 
Caribbean islands and SA in the 60's.  Here is what I used with a 100 
watt rig and was thrilled at the performance.

(1) 130 feet of 300 ohms twin lead with the far one end shorted and 
pulled up over a coconut by a local climber $5 US max and connected to a 
small nylon line for adjustment in an inverted or sloping fashion back 
to my hotel room on the beach. (without the local climber  bring along a 
slingshot fishing line launcher.) If the hotel wasn't right on the beach 
or had any 70 foot palms I just drove to another one that did. Masting 
anything up beyond 50 feet by yourself just forget it.  Palm trees are 
great substitutes.  I think this antenna was describe for 160 in Bill 
Orr's (W6SAI) firsts handbooks.

(2) Since most resorts had copper water piping (now it is almost all 
PVC) that provided the ground connection or a lightweight run of RG-59 
went to the twin lead connected by one side to a ground stake and the 
other to the hot side.

(3) Today's rigs with auto tuners should have no problem  in feeding 
this set up.  Back there was no internet, DSL's, routers and modems.  
Today things are different  a longer coax (RG-8x) may be advisable in 
getting this away from the noise sources.  My radio for top band back 
then were a pair of Drake Twins and with today's radios ad switching 
supplies all of this could fit in a carry one with room to spare for a 
laptop for logging and some a 500 wire rolls for a Beverage. If you 
can't get up a Beverage tie some of the wire on rocks and pitch them 
into the waters to enhance your ground connection or just run out some 
radials under the sand.

I think the point I am trying to make is that if you have a good 
DX-pedition QTH picked out in advance which you can even Google Earth as 
needed, this idea would work well.  However, if you don't end up in a 
good location there isn't anything that you could carry along on a plane 
that would change much of this unless you are willing to pay huge cargo 
and brokerage charges.


Herb Schoenbohm, KV4FZ