Topband: DXE Thunderbolt

[Tom Boucher]

David G3WGN,

I'm sure you must have some tall trees down there in the Dart Valley! You
could save yourself a bundle in shipping charges alone by putting up a
simple wire inverted 'L' or a 'T'.

Use a pneumatic tennis ball launcher to place the halyard over the tree at
the highest point. I have one of these and will even come down and do it
for you as you're not far away!

My 'L' is 90 feet up and 43 feet out to another tree. It is matched at 1825
KHz by a simple 1,600 pf high voltage ceramic capacitor as an L-network
from base to the radial field. These caps are hard to come by these days,
so rather than making the antenna slightly longer and inductive, it is
probably better to make it slightly shorter and capacitive and then
matching with a small shunt inductor, known as a 'hairpin'.

Look forward to hearing you on 160!
73
Tom G3OLB