Hay Bay

Hay Bay

Great day today out at the property at Hay Bay doing "Radio Stuff" with Rick, VE3ORY.

A few months ago I purchased a "Band Springer" portable antenna from SOTABeams in the UK......regardless of the "amazing reviews" on the SOTABeams website, I have never been able to get this antenna to work - AT ALL - so, I ended up with this wire antenna that just wouldn't tune on any band whatsoever.

A week ago I had an exchange of messages with Steve - WG0AT, about the wire antenna he uses on his SOTA activations.  It turns out that there was enough wire in the Band Springer antenna to remake it into a copy of Steve's antenna.

Rick and I got out the large tape measure and the Band Springer, and started to measure and cut it to Steve's antenna measurements.  Once it was cut and reassembled we hooked it up to analyzer and gave it a good checking over.  It works from 40m and up, and has a 3.1:1 SWR on every band, not good - but usable with a tuner.

My FT-879D was hooked up to it and we made three contacts in quick succession, K7V in Helena, MT; N4GNO in Alabaster, AL; and W9W in Oshkosh, WI.  All three gave me good signal reports after I asked for "true" reports instead of the standard "59", so I'm happy with this antenna.

For those interested in the details of the antenna, it was recut to a radiator of 41', a counterpoise of 17', and it uses a 9:1 unun.  In fact we cut two 17' counterpoises and used them both.