[VHFcontesting] Getting beginners interested in VHF Contesting

[Bill Dzurilla]

Dave,

Great idea.  There should indeed be a market for a 50/144/432 tribander, if it's practical.  The $130 Elk 144/432 single feed line duobander is only 2' long and works like a bandit on the satellites.  Not sure what it would take to extend this log periodic to 6m.  

One thing with Joe706ers who would like to try VHF but can't afford an antenna is to remind them to try their internal antenna tuners on 6m.  When my 6m yagi went down, I tried 6m with my HF vertical.  With the tuner, it worked fine.  Not nearly as well as a yagi, but well enough to work South America when the skip came in.  And of course, when there's skip a simple 6m dipole works wonders. 

Also, while new commercial antennas and coax are pricey, there are a lot of used ones that can be had for little or nothing.  I put an ad on the reflector of my local club that I was looking for a 2m yagi and got 3 replies - 2 offering me one for free and the other offering me one for $20.

73, Bill NZ5N

>  From the conversations I've had with non-VHFers, cost is a
> major issue 
> to getting on VHF/UHF.  On HF you can toss a $5 dipole
> in a tree, feed 
> it witn junk coax and work a bunch of people on 80 and
> 40.  As W3ZZ 
> points out, that doesn't work on VHF.  Most decent
> VHF/UHF antennas are 
> at least $100, and a decent low lost feedline is at least
> $50, depending 
> on how much length you need.  So $150 gets you ONE
> BAND worth of 
> effective antenna.  Joe706 needs $450 worth of
> antennas (assuming he has 
> a support for them) just to try something he might not even
> enjoy 
> doing.  And if he want to get on a band where he needs
> a transverter, 
> that's another $400.
> 
> W3ZZ and I were discussing this at Dayton last year. 
> I compared this 
> situation to the 50's, when Mosley or whomever
> commercialized the first 
> 20-15-10 triband beam.  Three bands from a single
> aerial and feedline, 
> reasonable cost and manageable size did a lot for activity
> on those 
> bands.  Where would we be today in regards to
> contesting and DXing, 
> without the triband beam?
> 
> What we need is somebody to come up with a good 50-144-432
> triband 
> antenna with a single feedline to go along with the IC-706s
> and the 
> various Yaesu FT-8x7s out there.  If it were
> commercially available in 
> the range of $100-$200, that would be terrific.  Icom
> and Yaesu have 
> done a terrific job with creating 50/144/432 rigs at
> reasonable cost, 
> now if somebody could solve the antenna issue as well...
> 
> Lacking such an antenna, I think WA5VJB's "Cheap Yagis" are
> a great way 
> to get started for low $$$.  I'm gonna try to build a
> few this summer 
> for two reasons: 1) To see for myself how reproduceable
> these antennas 
> are, and 2) to have some antennas I can loan out if any of
> my "Joe706" 
> friends wanna try VHF contesting.
> 
> Just my $0.02
> 
> 73, Dave/K8CC
>