Family
ARES
The Hi Meadow Fire
Hi Meadow Lesson 1
Hi Meadow Lesson 2
Hi Meadow Lesson 3
Hi Meadow Lesson 4
Hi Meadow Lesson 5
The Estabrook Fire
The Snaking Road Gulch Fire
The Black Mountain Fire
ARES Training
Projects
The Ubiquitous J-Pole
The Mirrored J-Pole
The Super J-Pole
HT Whip Antenna
An Arrow Antenna
ARES Std Power Cable
SMA to BNC
Prototype 1
Prototype 2
Software
AdaNEC
Adaprs
ARESlog
PDA Stuff
PDA: Progect
PDA: Pilot-DB
ARES Vehicles
Unimogs
Pinzgauers
C303s
Flyfishing
Updates

HT Whip Antenna

A while ago I was perusing the usenet newsgroup rec.radio.amateur.antenna, and I came across a discussion revolving around the question, "what is a good 'backcountry' antenna for my HT?". Most of the responses mentioned a twinlead J-pole; but a few mentioned soldering a half-wave piece of piano wire into a BNC connector. This piqued my interest, so off I went.

BNC connectors are quite easy to find; no problem there. However, in pursuing piano wire, I found the large hardware stores to be fairly clueless -- especially Home Base. My experience there is as follows:

OK, so I go to Home Depot; the guy there knows what I'm talking about, but no idea where the store keeps it. Sigh.

I try my local hardware store, Conifer Hardware. Bingo! I'll never go to a big store without checking my locals again!

So, piano wire in hand, I went home and built a vertical half-wave dipole. First, since my BNC connector was of the screw-type (as opposed to solder- or crimp-type) I attached a small length of RG-58; it stuck out of the BNC about 1 inch (2.5 cm). I exposed the center conductor and the braid; then, using a pair of pliers, I ripped the center conductor out of the coax, and pushed the .030" dia piano wire into the hole. I trimmed the piano wire to about a 20" (50 cm) length, and I had myself a quarter-wave whip.

Next step was to solder a counterpoise to the coax braid. I looked for a small-diameter flexible wire, but could find none. If you know of a source for 20 to 24 AWG rubber coated wire, let me know. Anyway, to find my counterpoise, I sacrificed a pair of stereo headphones to the worthy cause. The wire was coated with some kind of lacquer, so I had to burn that off before it could be soldered to the braid. Once done, I had my half-wave dipole.

In the Bailey area, there are a number of repeaters which can be used. The ones on Conifer Mountain (147.225, 147.120, 447.150) are easy to hit, even with low power. However, the ones on Squaw Mountain (146.940, 145.145, etc) couldn't be done with the factory antenna and my half-watt of low power. With my new antenna, that half-watt gets in just fine.