160m gp VaRadAng antenna.
a special vertical antenna for 160 meters with Variable Angle Radiaton
due the strong wind.


Sometime ago I decided to try gas filled balloons for raising a 160 mt l/4 vertical about 39 meters long.
The effort had taken place just some days before the CQ 160 SSB 2003 contest.
balloon antenna
Follow this link to download a short AVI showing how flies such an antenna

No one of us, left to right IC8SDL, JAH, CQF and me POF had experiences before with gas-filled ballons.
This experience showed one thing: raising an antenna with gas filled balloons must be done without wind.
Due to strong Northern wind I asked to my friends to keep as steady as possible the wire antenna with the balloons during the launch operations.
But the wind put the antenna quite diagonally to the earth, even 30�, with lot of troubles to keeping it steady.
So we put fastening nylon cords at about 10meters from the roof to keep at least a first part of the antenna vertical.
Some minutes later we decided to put only 2 ballons due the strong wind, but the raising power diminished a lot.
The ballons were about 1cubic-meter each and the antenna wire with associated fasting cords were about 700grams.
The ballons were normal rubber lattice and lasted almost 3 days before falling back to the roof.
They were badly corrugated so must be thrown away.
So I partecipated to my first 160m contest.
The results had been very good with more than 400 qsos and 1st Italy\4thEurope\6th Wolrd places.
160mt-award

Updated awa-pic lug2018

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