Last year I treated myself to a new rig, a Yaesu FT-817ND, as it's small, does just about everything, and meets my needs as a camping/four wheel drive rig.  I have a couple of Hustler whip antennas mounted to the truck, so I'm able to operated on several bands without doing any tuning, or resonator changing, which is really nice for mobile operation. Although I've had good signal reports during my travels, using a whopping 5 watts to the mobile antennas, I'm always on the lookout for something better.  If I find myself camping in the mountains, it's a simple matter to hang a dipole antenna in the trees, but I spend a lot of time in the desert, and suitable antenna trees, or any tree for that matter, can be few and far between.  

Photo:  I'm set up on an abondoned section of Walerga Road, west of Roseville, CA.  The base of the PVC pipe rests on a piece of steel with a floor flange and a galvanized pipe nipple attatched to, and is attatched to the brush guard on the truck with a bungee cord.  The dipole antenna is fed with ladder line, and is arranged in an inverted vee.  The peak of the antnna is 17 feet.

For some time, I'd been toying with the idea of constructing a dipole for fun and Emcomm use that would be attached to the truck, and easy to set up by me in a matter of minutes.  I had already acquired a base to plant an antenna in, so it was simply a matter of taking a trip to a local hardware store, and purchasing a length of 1-1/2" and a length of 1" PVC pipe.  The 1" pipe fits almost perfectly inside of the larger pipe, and it is just the thing for a mast, as its cheap, ridgid enough, and since it's plastic, it doesn't affect the radiation of the antenna.  I cut off a piece of 1-1/2" pipe and attatched it at the 7-foot posistion of the 1" pipe. By inserting the short of the end of the smaller diameter pipe into the larger pipe, I was able to hoist the antenna up 17 feet, which is quite workable.  For VHF use, the mast is strong enough to hold a 6-meter dipole, and a small 2-meter Yagi, in addiiton to the high frequency antenna.

The high frequency antenna is simply a dipole, cut for the cw portion of 40 meters, made of stranded, 22-gauge speaker wire.  It's fed with 300-ohm ladder line, and terminates to a 4:1 balun, and feeds to the antenna tuner with mini-8 coaxial cable.  By using my manual MFJ antenna tuner, I can tune this antenna on any band from 75 to 10 meters.  

The hardest part about setting up the antenna is dealing with the wire when it tangles.  To set it up, it's a 1-man job that takes only a couple of minutes.  I simply untangle the wire, and lay the antenna on the ground.  Then, I tie the center insulator to the top of the mast, raise up the mast, and set the base of the larger PVC pipe into a metal base, that uses a floor flange, and a galvanized pipe nipple.  I use a bungee cord to attatch the PVC pipe to the truck - that's it!  The antenna is arranged as an inverted vee.  I tie the ends off to whatever is handy, but if nothing is handy, they can be attatched to the ground, using a couple of 20 penny nails.  

Photo:  The tailgate of my truck makes a decent operating posostion.  Note the antenna tuner and my FT-817ND on the bed of the truck.  The black bag contains a 12-volt lead acid cell, and the camo bag is my "go bag" for my FT-817.  Today's weather was sunny and 72 degrees, and you couldn't have asked for a better day to operate portable high frequency.

Saturday, April 24, 2010 was the day that I planned to use my new Emcomm antenna for the first time, I since I'm a regular member of the 40 meter Jefferson Noon Net, on 7204 KHz, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to try out my antenna.  I had picked out a site about three miles west of my house, on a deserted and bypassed section of Walerga Road, west of Roseville, CA, as this site was deserted, a long ways from any power lines, and very secluded.  

I arrived on site about 1030, and I was set and ready to go aby about 1045.  I used a barb wire fence to hold up each end of the antenna, and the center support was attatched to the grill protector on my truck.  I did have a visitor, a bicycle enthusiast by the name of Victor, who watched me set up the operation, and asked a lot of questions about what I was doing, and amateur radio in general.  I was more than happy to chat with him, and graciously, he snapped a couple of photos of me.

The Jefferson Noon Net went very well with my antenna.  I was able to work, on 40-meter phone, stations all over the state of California, plus stations in Oregon, Washington, Montana and Nevada.  I received reports generally in the 33 to 55 range, which wasn't too bad, considering the very margional band conditions - we hadn't had a sunspot for nearly two weeks - the relitively low height of the antenna, and the QRP, 5 watts that I was running. No, I didn't exactly knock 'em dead, but I had a lot of fun, operating portable, battery power, QRP.

Photo:  WS6L is checking in to the Jefferson Noon Net, as Victor snaps my photo.

After the net, instead of packing up my station and heading home, I tuned the antenna up on 30 meters and worked several stations in British Columbia, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado.  20 meters was alive with signals, but there was a contest in progress, and I didn't feel like competing with the contesters; anyway, 30 meters is one of my favorite bands, as I love cw, and the band is usually usable for 18 or so hours a day.

Whatever the case, my antenna works, and allows me to operate high frequency, from any place of my choosing.

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