[TowerTalk] Good vacation antenna

[Steve Harrison]

On 7/3/2025 7:37 AM, cqtestk4xs--- via TowerTalk wrote:
> I'm no longer in a QTH where I can put up a tower, or for that matter, any antenna.  So I am planning on doing some operating when we camp out.
> I'm looking at a multi-band vertical that can be attached to the tent camper tongue framework (temporarily).  I want the antenna to cover 40-10 mtrs, easily set up and take dpown and can be collpsed to roughly 6 ft sections.  The old 14 AVQ would be pwerfect but is no longer made.
> Any ideas?

Yup; when I was living with my ole, doddering father in a gated 
HOA-ruled community during his last days, I used an old, 
weakened-by-innumerable shots Wallyworld slingshot to shoot a 
nearly-invisible 60 or 80 lb fishing line up as high as I could get it 
into a pine tree. I tied the heaviest teardrop-shaped weight that 
Wallyworld had on the far end and had to watch to see where the fishing 
line eventually snaked down through all the pine branches. Sometimes, I 
could not find the weight; sometimes, it got caught up on a branch. And 
sometimes, I had to jerk the near end of the fishing line countless 
times to coax that weight to gradually, slooowwwllyy work its way down 
to where I could grab it.

That end of the fishing line became the line by which I then pulled up a 
thin wire (see below) that sloped upward to some extent as high in the 
tree as I could get it, but was sometimes only 30 - 35 feet long, and 
sometimes at least 58 feet of wire strung up sloping to the top but 
vertically through the tree. I reasoned that being nylon fishing line, I 
did not have to use an insulator 8-)

The ground-near end of the wire was tied to, and terminated at my 
metallic bedroom window frame, to an ordinary type N (or UHF, I don't 
remember now) female connector. The shell of the four-screw flange-mount 
connector was bolted to an aluminum bracket solidly screwed to the metal 
window frame. Down at the bottom of the frame, I attached more thin wire 
and ran it to the nearest cold water pipe. I also cut and laid out two 
counterpoise wires, 34 feet long, running in opposite directions. (The 
length of these was chosen only for convenience; I really didn't have 
room to make them any longer).

Then I attached a short length of RG213 or similar cable to the 
connector, led it into my bedroom and tuned it with an old, decrepit 
Heathkit SA-2060A tuner (decrepit, because that roller inductor coupling 
was ALWAYS loosening up since there was no ability for it to wobble 
back-and-forth freely to accomodate the well-worn plastic roller 
inductor shell).

I used that antenna from August 2018 until August 2021 and finished 
working my 5BDXCC with it, in addition to working over 50 countries on 
160M, too. I was able to run 700W output from an AL-800, however, which 
really made a big difference. I usually didn't have to wait long to bust 
pileups  8-D

I did have to redo the wire antler a few times when something broke or 
came loose. I used a Robin-blue (to try to camoflage it against the sky) 
#28 insulated stranded wire (from AllElectronics (back in the days when 
they were still alive and kicking).

Nobody EVER seemed to notice either the wire, nor my operating with all 
that power. If anybody ever noticed the fishing line coming out of the 
tree, they never said anything to me about it. I have no idea whether I 
ever had any TVI; dad didn't have a TV and neither of us ever listened 
to any music radio stations.

Of course, I always worked on the wire either in the early morning hours 
before sunup, or I'd shoot through the tree while hugging the side of 
the house so nobody would notice me 8-D

So very simple wire antlers can actually work out quite well in 
temporary accomodations.

Steve, K0XP