Real Hams Don’t Leave Home Without A Tarp! And The Craziest Antenna You’ve Ever Seen That Never Was…
We would wake up early so I could scour the Seacoast Amateur Radio Flea Market in Hampton MA for some crystals and variable capacitors and then head over to the little bump called “Oak Hill” (W1/MV-006) for a Summits-On-The-Air activation. My ulterior motive, inspired by this thread on QRZ.com, was to use this as an antenna:
I remembered this heap of metal, some sort of logging equipment perhaps, because I had used it as a table to hold my radio during a SOTA a few years ago. I had spent the night before making a couple alligator clamps to PL259 connector jigs to hook into the back of my MFJ 16010 random wire tuner. If you scroll down through this old post, you can see the random wire tuner in action.
The alligator clip to PL259 jig is simply a short piece of coax that I terminated with a standard PL259 connector. On the other end of the coax, I separated the braid from the center pin. I then soldered some 14awg stranded wires onto the coax braid and then the coax center pin. The alligator clips were attached to the wires. In the bottom part of the photo, you can see two separate alligator clamps attached to a banana pin. While the coax cable PL259 connector will pretty obviously screw into the “antenna” port on the back of the tuner, the banana plug less obviously can be pressed into the center hole of the SO239 connector. Of course, this would mean that there was no opportunity to ground the antenna unlike the coax jig that I made. In fact, the stake seen in the photo is meant to be used as a ground rod, which may or may not be effective given its small stature.
The MFJ 16010 Random Wire Tuner is simply a variable capacitor and a variable inductor that you twirl the dials on and take readings with an antenna analyzer until a low SWR is achieved. We’ll talk about this more in the next post…
So, my goal, asides from getting my one SOTA point for this nearly 4 mile hike, was to make some contacts by using that old logging cart as an antenna and the stake as a ground rod, and tuning it up through the MFJ random wire tuner. No such luck…
After hitting the electronics flea, we drove over to Loudon, NH. We knew we were in for some rain, but hoped to catch a break with the start-stop nature of the day’s precipitation.
We took the Tower Trail to the top. AA1F speculated that a bear ate this sign…
No sooner did we reach the summit then the skies opened up on us.
We quickly set up the REI Quarterdome Tarp. This particular piece of gear has proven invaluable to us. You can see my potential antenna in the background!
Nellie hid under the table on her NEMO Switchback sleeping pad…another great, lightweight, versatile item to bring on a SOTA activation.
We waited for the rain to stop, temperatures in the mid forties fahrenheit, wet and grumpy…
AA1F figured he could will the rain to stop by staring at the weather forecast on his phone. A cell containing exactly three lightning bolts and thunder claps halted our plans of activating…
We packed up the tarps and headed back to the van, leaving Oak Hill un-activated.
You win some, you lose some! I did get crystals and some capacitors, and a few other little odds and ends at the Seacoast Flea, so chalk that up to a win. My little quest to light up a crazy antenna will have to wait til better days. But, boy oh boy, it is always an adventure! (Get yourself a lightweight tarp, some paracord, and stakes…well worth the weight!)
See you across the airways!
KM1NDY
(Never ever paid or endorsed…just using these products and talking about them.)