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go to hamstation .com everyone this is ham talk
live episode number 45 antenna building 101 with
Emmett Hohensee the third wq8 w0qh recorded live
on thursday december 29th 2016 i'm your host
neo rap wb9 vpg thanks for tuning into this episode
of ham talk live sorry we're a little late my
guest was talking and he said i could blame him
so I'll blame Emmett, so. Anyway, tonight we're
joined by Emmett W0QH and he will be taking your
questions about antenna building and making antennas
out of stuff you already have. And we'll take
your calls live in just a few minutes. I'll let
you know when to do that. Last week on the show,
Brian Lynn, KD0HI, I was here to talk about the
meaning of 75 and the Christian Amateur Radio
Fellowship. So if you missed out on what 75 means,
give a listen. It's on HamTalkLive .com in the
archive. And you can also get that on most podcasting
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So get your antenna questions ready to go. After
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-NET -HAM -1, 812 -638 -4261. You can also tweet
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We already have one, so I'll get to that in a
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back with Emmett right after this word from Tower
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HamTalk Live. HamTalk Live is on the air every
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or download it from most popular podcasting websites.
Emmett Honessey III, W0QH is the chief engineer
at Radio Waves in the St. Louis, Missouri metro
area. Emmett designs and builds custom antennas
for both amateur and commercial radio. He's been
on numerous ham radio podcasts teaching about
antennas and was instrumental in the operation
of the W8D Dayton Hamvention Superstation. And
we may even talk about that for next year a little
bit this evening. He also also recently helped
activate the Dry Tortugas National Parks, as
opposed to the Wet Tortugas, I guess. Anyway,
they had a de -expedition there, and he helped
out with that. And his company, Radio Waves,
is also a proud co -sponsor of the amateur radio
news line Young Ham of the Year Award. You can
visit radio waves online at radio waves with
a Z. That's radio waves wavz .com So Emmett,
thanks so much for coming on the show tonight
Scott It's Neil. I'm sorry. I'm someplace else.
I was just I was just talking about Scott and
no Yeah, I was thinking about it was it's funny
I've got a I was just looking at a picture of
him when he's at this electrical exhibit of someone
who got electrocuted and then he's like standing
right next to it and anyway No, I had my mind
on Scott for just a second. Sorry about that.
I kind of went off on us. But Neil, it's an honor
to be here with you, man. It's good hearing you
again and seeing you again earlier today. And
sorry I got you so involved in our conversation
that we missed the start time of the show. Yeah,
we were getting ready and we got talking about
something. And all of a sudden I looked up and,
oh! it's too it's too after so sorry about that
folks yeah we were yeah we were talking to uh
we were talking about scott of course or actually
no it was or was it christian i'm not really
sure yeah yeah one of the one of those guys yeah
yeah well anyway uh let's get into the to the
antennas and i have some fun with this tonight
um and one of the things i know that you're interested
in is, you know, making stuff out of stuff you
got laying around. Um, but first let's, let's
talk about just a basic antenna bill. Let's say
that you know the sunspot cycles awful the the
bands have needed cardiopulmonary resuscitation
here lately uh and you know 160 is is going to
be a better option for the next few years so
let's say i decide i want to put up an antenna
for 160 what do you suggest well my one go -to
antenna for a single band operation as far as
a wire type antenna would be a simple double
bazooka The quickest installation would be a
dipole, but the quietest would be the double
bazooka because you have a little bit more gain,
it's quieter, and it has a little bit more bandwidth
than your normal dipole. Very good. You want
to give the newbies out there a little explanation
on what the double bazooka is, by the way? Oh,
sure. The double bazooka is basically an antenna
that's made out of coax, and what we've done
is we've taken what you can call a folded dipole
and put... Basically the element that would be
you know, let's say the top element and that's
actually the the center conductor of the coax
and then on the ends Most people don't realize
this but those those end wires really all they
are tuning stubs They are meant to make the antenna
resonate at the specific frequency at 50 ohms,
which is nice Very good What this does is it
basically creates a loop type antenna. It gives
you some of the benefits of a loop antenna, which
is very quiet. It reduces the noise that you
would normally hear from, let's say, magnetic
type devices like motors and someone's bad. Ignition
system as they drive by and I can't begin to
tell you how many times You know, like the dump
truck is driving down the street and they've
got a bad, you know Glow plug or something like
that. You can hear just whining as it goes goes
down the street almost in stereo You know but
yeah, okay great well and a 160 loop well, you'd
have to have Yeah, you need real estate for that
Yeah, you'd need about 500 feet for that and
that's the that's an alternative to having something
like a loop would be something like the double
bazooka It's designed just for that one frequency
especially It's a high -performance antenna for
one frequency and that's the way we like to describe
it. We've got a couple serious DXers and also
people who like to compete in different competitions
that like to use the double bazooka as a spotter
type antenna and then they'll use their beams
and whatever and point it in the direction that
they you know that they hear the signals coming
from but for the most part it's it's an excellent
antenna to play with if you have one band and
one band only you want to play on and that would
be the double bazooka then of course the next
one would be a simple dipole which is basically
you know two wires with a with a matching not
a matching section but a simple baling that you
would put up in the middle and you don't even
necessarily have to go out and buy a baling you
can make one yourself fairly simply and we can
probably get into that in a little bit as we
get into the discussion of antennas 101 yeah
great well you mentioned that you know having
to improvise is always something that that we
need to do. And yeah, I learned that this fall
in some contesting and our main antenna went
down and we had to improvise. But one of the
things I wanted to ask you about is something
that At the Dayton Youth Forum a few years ago.
There was a high school club which which I do
But this was a different high school club and
they had a crazy antenna building contest That
was one of their activities where they just took
any kind of random object and tried to load it
up So they had ladders they had shopping carts
from the grocery store They had light poles What
advice do you have about trying to make one of
these with just some random objects like that?
Oh, man. Yes. One of the things that one of the
things that you and I were discussing earlier
when we before we were on the air and we ended
up starting late was was how we in the beginning
back when I was young. That did happen once back
when I was young. Back in the day. Yeah. When
you had to walk to school uphill both ways through
10 feet of snow in the middle of a sharknado.
Actually, it was 20 below zero quite often where
I was coming to school. But that's another story.
But the thing was, is I wanted to, and believe
it or not, this was about when I was about seven
years old, I wanted to listen to the Omaha Royals
play baseball. And I, of course, didn't have
a radio to listen to it and I couldn't and my
parents, you know, back then we didn't necessarily
have the money to just buy me a radio so I can
listen to it. So they did the next best thing.
They took me to the library and I found a book
on radios and I found the plans for a cat whisker
type radio and I built that thing and That's
when I first started getting in trouble because
it was really simple. It was wire with a toilet
paper roll, a razor blade, a pencil lead back
when they used real pencil leads, a bobby pin,
and the speaker. was our phone. Back when I did
this, this was when you still had to lease your
phone from Bell. Needless to say, I got in so
much trouble from my dad because I took the phone
apart, took the speaker part out and used it
for my radio and then I tried sneaking it back
and I didn't get it back in time. It was funny.
That's how I started. It was literally the wire
I found was just wire that was you know the phone
guys had a whole bunch of wire that was just
kind of laying around over by a place where my
dad worked and they said yeah go ahead and take
that spool right over there and it was just basically
that you know your simple single pair type wire
and I measured things out I coiled everything
up on the toilet paper roll I did all the things
that they said in the instructions and I built
my own antenna my first antenna was out was made
out of a extension cord one of those Back at
the time it was a Christmas tree extension cord
so it was like about a 30 foot wire and I just
split it in half and stuck both legs outside
and brought it in so it was like a small miniature
doublet and it was amazing. I could pick up so
many things. It was a lot more than just... uh,
the Omaha Royals baseball, it was the world.
And from that point on, um, I've been, I mean,
it was literally that, that was like the light
bulb came on and it hasn't shut off yet or burnt
out yet. Yeah. So what, what do you think of
this, this shopping cart thing? I love it. It
actually worked. They made it. The rule was you
had to make one contact with it. Right. Or it
didn't count. Yep. And it works. Yeah, it's amazing.
I've seen people load You know like those those
aluminum chairs that you that you get for sitting
out on the beach or going out places I've I myself
have done like I've taken a soda can I'll cut
off the top cut off the bottom and then I use
like scissors and I cut cut it into one continuous
wire effectively. You'd be surprised. You'd get
almost 16 feet of wire off of a soda can. It's
flat. It's very fragile, but you have about 16
feet, which if you were to figure that out, what
would 16 feet times 2 give us real quick? Oh,
that'd be about 20 meters, wouldn't it? And then
it would be a quarter wave on 40. So you could
do a lot with practically nothing. It's just
a matter of allowing your mind to imagine what
you can do with with what you've got. And as
an exercise back in the day when I was in the
military, or even before, well actually around
the time when I was in the military, our life
was all about constantly testing ourselves, constantly
pushing an envelope, constantly making ourselves
uncomfortable, putting ourselves in situations
where We didn't have everything we needed to
do our job. So we had to work with what we had
in the field. And trust me, Neal, sometimes the
places that I was at, there was nothing in the
field. You got to be really creative, really
quick on making things work. And when you knew
lives were on the line, there's that added incentive
of making things work. Just real quick, we do
have at our website at www .radiowaves .com,
I've got a section set up. It's called Antenna
Data and Information. So if you go to our website
and you look at the top bar, you'll see a section
called Antenna Data and Information. In there,
you'll have, if you go to that location, I've
got a section called antenna systems with several
downloads. And a couple of these downloads are
really handy downloads to have. One was a slide
rule that I designed for ICOM radio. It pretty
much gives you the links and everything. All
you do is you just download the PDF, cut it out,
and put it together. The other one is a real
slide rule, Neil, and you've got that one, don't
you? Yeah, the real one. I do, actually. Slide
rule. That is a tool that I use, believe it or
not, just about every day, mainly because it's
so much quicker than typing in everything to
get the right answer. Of course, on my wheel,
I've got little cheats that I've already, you
know, over the years I've put in it, but what's
so cool about it is you can pretty much pick
a frequency, and it'll give you an idea about
the length of wire that you need to work with.
The other downloads by the way on the website
are antennas and propagation, which this is the
army manual on, you know, basic antenna theory,
basic propagation. And by understanding just
those two things, you'd be surprised at how much
of the world gets opened up to you because you
can figure out fairly quickly. what you need
to do to make things work and there's a whole
section in there in that manual on field improvised
antennas and that's something we'll continue
to talk about and then of course you have the
regular radio wave slide rule and then you have
the U .S. Army antenna systems and then I'm not
going to be prejudiced we also have the U .S.
Marine antenna manual it's got more pictures
in it oh it has more pictures I see Yeah, we
don't we don't want to start another Battle here
All right, so before we take a break here and
then we're gonna take some calls What about a
little more traditional antenna we talked about
the crazy antennas like the shopping cart, but
Just stuff laying around at home that you may
have already. What do you? suggest for making
a more traditional for actual performing antenna
Okay, I'm gonna give you a number. It's a special
number. It's a key number It's a number that
if you can remember this number, you can probably
have the key to figure out just about everything
that you need Four six eight everyone get a pen
and paper and write this special number down
four six eight What do you think that number
is Neil? That would be the speed of light converted
to meters or feet feet for wavelength that's
correct and then of course there's a little bit
of an adjustment for it for you know because
we're going to be using thin wire instead of
super wide wire but with that number that's a
half wavelength so you take whatever frequency
you think you're going to be working on divide
that by 468 and that's the total length of wire
you need to have a resonant wire on the frequency
that you want to operate on and then you can
cut that in half and then you have your basic
dipole Now, because I'm a scientist, I have to
give out the other number. Please. And that's
300. Yes. In meters. Believe it or not, I actually
use meters more than I do Imperial because it's
just so much simpler to work with for me. I like
tens. It's easier to work instead of fractions.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I try to convince people
of that. Sometimes it's difficult. Yeah I mean
it's like you know it's hard to change our ways
and I understand that but for you know just like
you said on this from the scientific standpoint
by not dealing with fractions but by dealing
with tens it's easier to work and it's quicker
to calculate too. Yep sure is okay I interrupted
go ahead. No go ahead you're going into a break.
No you're good go ahead and so what do we do
with the 468? Okay, take the 468 you divide that
by the frequency that you think you're gonna
operate on so let's go with 468 divided by 14
.1 Okay, and that would give you a number. I
don't have my calculator with me But it will
give you a number around 16 and a half feet long
Okay actually 33 Around 33 feet and what will
happen there is you take that number and you
divide that by 2 okay once you got that number
which should be about 16 and a half feet that's
the length of wire you need for each side of
the dipole and what you'll do is you'll take
like you take an extension cord you could take
some spare wire some old phone wire i can't begin
to tell you how many phone how many antennas
i've made out of telephone wire um scrap wire
um pull it to the you know pull it to the length
cut it And then try and put it together in, if
you have a piece of coax, you can go ahead and
connect it to the coax. If you don't have coax,
you can make something like a doublet. Or what
you can do is at that point, at that 16, you
know, the center point, you can go ahead and
twist the wires together all the way down and
it becomes a balanced feed all the way down.
And in many cases, believe it or not, just like
that, it should almost work without having to
mess with tuning or anything like that. Sometimes
if you have to do tuning, you can do something
like a common mode type choke. With twin lead,
it's not as easy. But what you have to do is
you just give it a couple more twists at the
top. towards the top of the antenna, or you change
the angle of the antenna. In other words, you
either lower the center so that the things are
more level, or you drop the legs down so they're
a little bit at a higher angle. And believe it
or not, that will have a tendency of changing
the overall impedance of the antenna. So this
is kind of interesting with the dipole. Most
people don't realize is that at an antenna that's
a dipole, at a flat top is 75 ohms. And that's
why we use that one -to -one baling, that voltage
baling or the current baling that you hear about
so much. Or if you set it up as an inverted V,
it becomes closer to 50 ohms. So what happens
is by changing the angle of the wire, you can
actually change the impedance of the antenna
without having to mess with matching sections
and stuff like that. Very good. We are going
to take a break. We're going to pay some of the
bills. But we're going to come back and when
we do... Who's that bill guy? Yeah, I think he
started Microsoft, if I remember right. Yeah.
When we come back, we're going to... take your
call. So get ready for that. I'll let you know
when, but we're going to take your calls here
in just a minute. After this message from the
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Oh yeah. You're talking ham radio, baby. You're
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for HamTalk Live. So it's time for your calls
now. If you have an antenna question for Emmet,
call 812 -NET -HAM -1. That's 812 -638 -4261.
Or you can Skype your question at HamTalk Live
or you can tweet at HamTalk Live. We do have
one question here on Twitter we will start off
with from AirDispatcherLAS. and wants to know,
I want to build antennas. Do you need an antenna
analyzer? And if so, hang on here a second. Let
me turn you back on here. And if so, which one
is best? Which antenna analyzer is best? And
your thoughts on the MFJ269C. Wow, good question.
Technically, an analyzer is an excellent tool
to have in your your shack at just about any
given time there actually there's a couple things
that you know if you have the ability and you
have the the funding for it um you know an analyzer
is always a good thing you could also go with
a noise bridge which doesn't cost as much and
gives you about the same information uh definitely
you need a dummy load a good dummy load because
you're gonna You're going to use it as a diagnostic
tool to determine if your coax is bad or something.
But for the most part, yes, an analyzer is something
that should, if you can afford it and you can
get it, definitely have one in your shack. Otherwise,
there are other ways of tuning an antenna, believe
it or not, that you don't necessarily need an
analyzer. Although, I will admit I carry an analyzer
with me just about every time I go in the field.
And you're not going to believe this analyzer
is the... is the MFJ -223. It's a little itty
-bitty thing that quite literally fits into your
pocket. It's accurate enough to give me an idea
of what's going on with the antenna and it allows
me to get into the area that I want to get into.
I like the 223. It also has a nice little color
display and it's also good for when we're at
shows to show people this is what the antenna
does. The question on the MFJ 269C, believe it
or not, we have one at just about every spot
in our shop. In other words, every bench has
at least one of those analyzers there. Because
the thing we discovered about the 269 series
products is that... They're fundamental circuits,
which means they're easier to work with. And
they give us the answers that we're actually
looking for when we're trying to, let's say,
tune a NFET halfway of antenna component. We
literally, when we build our NFET halfway of
antennas, we hand tune each of those coils. And
these analyzers have proven to be you know, the
most efficient and the easiest for our guys to
basically work with. There's a lot of other analyzers
out there like RigPro. I also have what's called
MiniVNA, which I love a lot. I take it with me
too, especially when I'm doing certain types
of engineering work, when I need to have a lot
more complex, you know, uh... let's just say
telemetry information and so on about what's
going on on the antenna or the circuit or the
filter or whatever uh... so yeah Quick, a long
answer to a short question was, yes, if you can
get a V &A or an analyzer, that would be good.
I definitely like the 269. Matter of fact, I
have an MFJ 269 that I purchased back in 1997,
I think, and it's still in service. I've taken
that. That one analyzer has literally helped
me to put together something on the order of
75 FM radio stations in Africa. So needless to
say, that was the one tool that I had with me
to put together a lot of different things in
the field. And it's durable and it still works.
Very good. Oh, we've got a caller on the line
here. Who's this? Yes, sir. This is Tony Ridland
from Kokomo, Indiana. KC9QVE is my call sign.
And my question was, I run HF with a 120 foot
wire outside my one level department. building
and a lot of times in the winter you know with
the ice and snow and stuff a lot of times the
weight of the ice sometimes makes that 10 wire
although we've uh my hand buddies have helped
me upgrade with like a thicker black wire than
what we used last winter a lot of times it comes
apart and i have a uh portable mfj i remember
here right in front of me let's see if i can
find the crazy thing you know 1621 but it's just
for 40 through 10 my question i guess is is there
a more efficient Indoor antenna element that
could just be put indoors in my shack So like
in the winter much especially we'll have to worry
about it breaking again for like the sixth or
seventh time the last two or three pairs Is are
you talking about it's like a it's a it's a coil
the 1641 Okay. Yeah some sometimes that helps
the if you have like a porch or something like
that and you lose your 120 foot wire because
of bad weather it doesn't hurt to have I've gone
as far as just using a like a one of those telescoping
stainless steel whip antennas that they sell
with a coil and I literally attach it to let's
say the the the porch you know the somewhere
on the porch and then I'll either run it what's
called a counterpoise Where I run a couple wires
down below or I'll just connect to the steel
railing and use that as my counterpoiser ground
plane You'd be surprised what you can do with
something very simple. And the nice thing about
having that coil is it allows you to kind of
fine -tune things by moving your alligator clip
up and down the coil to get you the best signal.
And of course, if you don't have an analyzer,
what you do is you go to your radio, you turn
your AGC off, and you just start moving things
up and down until you hear the maximum static,
if you can find a dead spot on the band. And
what you do is you just go for the loudest noise,
and that will generally tell you that you're
pretty much in the area you want to be. All right.
Well, gentlemen, I appreciate the information
and I hope you get a whole lot more info on the
podcast. You take several more calls with even
more questions, probably even better than the
one that I asked. Appreciate it very much. 73.
73. That was a good point. Tony, that was a very
good question, by the way, because it's, you
know, how many times do we have one antenna and
the next thing you know, it's not working anymore.
What are we going to do? I've had that happen
so many times. As a matter of fact, we had one
example was out on the batfish, the USS batfish,
which is a submarine that tornado took out the
main antennas and the big loop antenna. So, you
know, it was all about trying to come up with,
come up with, you know, what can we do to get
on the air? And it was quite interesting, the
different things we came up with. And of course
we did get on the air. But yeah, you're going
in the right direction, Tony. I appreciate you
very much. Happy 2017 to both of you. Bye -bye.
Thanks, Tony. Bye -bye. And we've got another
call on the line. It's Karen Eve -Murray, KD2GUT.
Good evening, Karen. Hey, good evening. How's
everything going there? Excellent. It's really
nice. It's not too cold, not too hot. Actually,
I'm down in my lab, so I can't tell you what
the temperature is outside. I was going to say,
as long as you're not frozen where you can't
move, and as long as you Aren't too hot. You're
doing good. I have a question. I'm planning ahead
actually for the spring And maybe you can help
me out. I'm a relative radio rookie. I've got
my ticket maybe three years Not quite and everything
I have in my shack right now is kind of off the
shelf. I've done no building I wanted to get
up and running. I think 2017 is going to be the
year for me to get out into the parks. I don't
know that I'll be doing any summits, but when
it's beautiful out, who wants to be indoors?
Can you suggest for me, as a relative newbie,
an antenna that I can use, preferably for one
or two bands, but if my option is only one band,
what would be a good HF antenna for me to try
building and setting up myself On site that would
that would really get things rolling for me in
the spring. I think You know what you've touched,
Karen, thank you for calling. You've really touched
on a very good topic right there. One thing that
I really appreciated about the National Parks
on the Air is the huge mobilization of people
getting out and just experiencing nature and
having fun and enjoying their hobby. And Karen,
I will tell you this, whenever I go somewhere,
I always generally have a HF radio of some kind
with me. And I will take one or two different
types of antennas. The first antenna is one of
our in -fed half wave antennas. It's an all band
antenna. It's not the most efficient antenna
in the world. However, it is a good antenna to
get on the air and literally talk around the
world on with not a lot of power. It's about
33 feet long, so it's not that hard to, you know,
if you had something like a push -up pole or
you could throw something up in a tree, just
running, you know, that wire somewhere, it doesn't
take too much to get on the air. The other one
is, is an in -fed... I'd like to kind of go with
the in feds especially with real quick mobile
type stuff because you don't want to be running
a whole lot of wire you don't want to attract
a huge amount of attention to yourself as far
as all the stuff you're setting up and plus we
want to have fun when we go out so we don't want
to spend all our time setting things up just
to have about five minutes on the radio the other
antenna is a in fed half wave 40 -20 -10 and
what that gives you is it gives you 40 meters
20 meters and 10 meters without a tuner, and
it's very efficient and fed. The reason why I
kind of like it is because it is a full 20 meter
half wave antenna. It's a full wavelength 10
meter antenna, and it's kind of, you know, it's
a compromise on the 40 meter side, but you can
definitely get out. And those are two antennas
that I really like, especially going out in the
field. Every year around the 4th of July, I like
to visit my daughter up in Boston, around Boston,
or actually in New Hampshire. And I have a tendency
of climbing up Mount Monadanoq. And what I like
to do is go up on top of the mountain and I'll
set up a little HF radio with an antenna and
generally believe it or not that antenna is one
of our in not an in fed halfway, but it's a One
of our like a 40 meter off center fed which gives
me you know some pretty good gain on 20 I get
40 as a resonant as a resonant component, and
then I can sometimes get 15 in and I can get
a lot of the other bands in. And I really like
that as far as just being able to get out in
the field and do something. It's light, it's
easy, it fits in a pencil case, and you're on
the air. And that's the key thing. Yeah, I appreciate
that because when I get to the site, I envision
myself unpacking and then saying all right I'm
now going to kill two hours trying to figure
out how to set up the antenna and basically I
want to plug and play this this would be the
ticket for that Oh yeah, as a matter of fact,
sometimes pre -planning, if you can put like
your radio, they sell these Pelican cases at
Sam's for $15. You could probably put your radio
in the battery or if you have a small, don't
get a big car battery or anything like that.
You can get these lighter weight batteries that
will give you like 12 to let's say 20 amp hours
of power which will give you a couple hours without
having to worry about charging things. and then
just kind of have everything figured out before
you go out and if you just as you keep doing
it make little notes and tune your kit so that
way when you get out there you connect the coax
to the to the antenna the antenna goes up on
your push -up fiberglass pole you can either
get those through like mfj sell some really good
push -up all up to 33 feet or You can go to Walmart
and get a 16 -foot crappie pole and then run
your wire up that way. Just keep it simple. Don't
make it complicated because the whole idea of
you going out there in the first place is enjoy
the environment, enjoy the ambiance, and have
some fun with your hobby. That I would like yeah,
I'm past the age of climbing trees, so Like the
idea of the pole very definitely or I can make
friends with some of the local squirrels maybe
it's There you go. There you go, right attach
an acorn to one end But I think these poles are
certainly the way to go. Thank you. Thanks very
much problem Another thing I carry in my kit
to just to let you know is a baseball with an
eye hook in it And what I do is I pick up some
80 pound test or 50 pound test monofilament line
and tie it to that baseball. And I can throw
it up in a tree fairly easy. And I'm using a
very lightweight monofilament, not lightweight,
but it's 50 pounds. So it's more than enough
to hold the antenna. It's not so big that it
takes up a ton of space. And I can easily take
it back whenever I want. Okay, I throw like a
girl. That's just it. You take a small baseball,
you can just start swinging it like you're swinging
your purse. the fifth to get myself back out.
I worked one park and had a real blast. And I
said, you know what? I've got to be doing more
of this in the year to come. So this will definitely
get me started, because the antenna was an issue
for me. I said, what am I going to do with an
antenna? Just look at that. Just look at something
like a simple push -up pole. The in -fed antenna
is the easiest of all. So something like the
in -fed half wave, 40, 20, 10. A pathfinder always
works. And what you can do too, just for the
fun of it, on a not so terrible day outside,
pretend like you're going out to the park and
set your stuff up out on your back porch. I can
begin to tell you how many times Rochelle and
I have sat out on our back porch on a night and
I literally set stuff up. And we just talk on
the radio with everything I just set up on the
porch. I'm not using our main antennas. I'm just
using what I would normally take in the field.
And we have a ball. And we have a nice little
fire. And it's kind of cozy and comfy. And in
an indirect way, I'm practicing for when I do
go in the field. But yet I'm having fun doing
it at home. That's right. And by the time, in
my case, by the time I get out into the field,
I will have already done it. It'll be, we hope,
second nature. That's good. Yeah. You've already
worked out your kinks. You haven't discovered
that you're missing half the stuff you need to
get on the air. Because you've already done it
at home. And you put it in a little case. You
keep it simple. Keep it light. And you'll have
fun. All right, I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have
to cut you off here We're almost out of time,
but we'll keep going and we've got another question
on Twitter, we'll get that by email and Emmett,
we may have to do this again. So anyway, that's
a wrap for this edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks
to Emmett from Radio Waves and everyone out there
in cyberspace for listening and calling in and
invite you back next Thursday night at 9 p .m.
Eastern time when Dave Anderson K4SV will be
here to talk about rig comparisons and beverage
antennas. And for a list of all of our upcoming
guests, visit HamTalk Live. So for now, this
is Neil Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7375, and may the
good DX be yours.