Sneaky antenna and operating from an apartment

Doomsday Prepper Forums

Help Support Doomsday Prepper Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Oldways

Admin
Administrator
Global Moderator
Joined
Jun 27, 2020
Messages
261
Reaction score
276
I hope you won't mind if I share a story with you about my then hubby and I hamming from the 6th floor of an apartment building at the intersection of Colorado Blvd and I-25 in Denver. This was about 1977 or 78.

He was more of the low ban ham operator and was wanting to run his KW to talk DX and local. But, there was no antenna's allowed much less the reaction that would have been had from a ham radio in the building. You know any interference on anything would have been blamed on it.

So, a roll of fairly narrow copper wire came to the rescue. From the Johnson KW matchbox that was between antenna and transceiver the copper wire was attached at the antenna connection. It went up to an approx 12" square of aluminum foil that was taped to the sliding glass door to the patio. In one corner of the aluminium foil the end of the cut copper wire was rolled into it for about 3 inches and taped down.

On the outside of the glass door was a corresponding block of aluminum foil taped on it and the cut end of the copper wire was rolled up and taped in. The RF was going to jump thru the glass.

We took the wire to the edge of the patio and made an insulator for it to go over the rail and drop down. He went down and I dropped the copper wire to him, he took it up a tree a good bit above the ground. And with an insulator connected to the wire, and then a small short rope tied to the insulator and tied off the antenna.

He came back in, and turned on the rig and the matchbox, etc. Then he keyed the mike. Nothing went up in smoke. So he tried calling CQ and got an answer. He used that set up for at least a year and to our knowledge no one ever knew. And from the street it was VERY hard to see if you knew where to look.

So, there's you an idea for a stealth antenna and operating.
 
For years I used speaker wire to make a wire antenna. I took a plastic coke bottle filled 1/2 with water and tied the wire to the bottle. I would throw the coke bottle out to a tree then use my radio, when I was finished I would pull the wire back into my apartment. de KA5SIW
 
Ok, so you're in an interesting area. We had a few people come down for Rocky Mtn Radio's talks where you used to work. Don't think they went on last year, which was too bad. Did you ever attend Techfest? My husband and I would do the sign in for that.
 
Are you talking about Techfest in Albuquerque? Yes, I went almost every year. I also helped at the Duke City Hamfest for the last 2 years. I also worked at the Socorro hamfest. Sure hope we can these events re-started once COVID is under control. de KA5SIW
 
We moved out of state, but all of those were fun events and I hope they pick up again. I was a Rocky Mtn member, became one when Brian first started the offshoot in ABQ. We did registration (and morning treats) for the tech fest for a number of years. We went to the Socorro hamfest once, and had a good time. We did registration for Duke City wayyyyy back when it was itty bitty when Ed James headed it. Bill then got it going pretty big. Just got a christmas card from Ed and Brian. Good people. There's a local group where we are now living in Kansas, so we'll be checking it out this spring, when things calm down.
 
Bill was the president of the Arlington Tex. club when I was first licensed back in 1984. Darn good organizer and a great ham. Kind'a funny to bump into him in New Mexico so many years later. I ask to join Rocky Mountain ham but they never got back to me. In the past I was president of the Socorro club, now I am not a member. One of their officers wrote on Facebook that "I was not right in the head". I resigned from the club and have nothing to do with them. Sorry, I don't remember an ice cream issue at Techfest. My Email is: [email protected] Take Care, Jim
 
You all do know your are speaking Creek to us non-ham folks. Pictures would be very helpful.
Here's a photo of the connection to my 20 and 40 meter antennas. This is the middle of my antennas and the highest point being the top of a 12 foot telescoping painters pole. The far ends of the wires are extended via paracord to the top of my privacy fence at various points of the yard.

The top two wires are for the 40 meter antenna wires. Each side of this dipole is a little under 30 feet long (theoretically a 40 Meter dipole should be using much longer wire, but this is very low for a 40 meter antenna, so it needs to be cut several feet shorter in order to get the proper impedence. The ends were stripped back and wrapped loosely around the screw terminals from the BALUN (connection between the BALanced section of the setup "the dipole" and the UNbalance section "the coax cable"). Being just twisted on doesn't seem good, but they are kept in place by the alligator clip leads connecting my 20 meter antenna wires. At this low height (relative to wavelength) my 40 meter transmissions go nearly straight up to the "F" layer of the ionosphere @225 miles up. There the signals are scattered and reflected back downward over a range of from 0 to about 600 miles. I have made a few contacts at over 1,000 miles with this setup.

The lower wires, connected with the alligator clip leads are from the 20 meter dipole. I don't recall how long they are, but again, they are shorter than you will hear is optimal, but they give me a 1:1 trans-match. at 12 feet high, this antenna is only a few feet low (relative to wavelength), so it puts out a more horizontal signal. This signal again hits the ionosphere and is reflected back down. If you look at my QSO map you will see that the 40 meter contacts (in purple) are all clustered around my location, whereas the 20 meter contacts (in green) are completely absent nearby, but extend out well over 5,000 miles from me. This is because beyond my RF horizon, the 20 meter signals are too high in the air to be received on the ground until you are pretty far away where they bounce back down.

antenna.JPG



This is not an ideal antenna. It is an expedient antenna. It had lasted a month in the yard when this photo was taken. My advice to people thinking about spending a lot of money on their antenna is to invest in a good antenna analyzer instead. Below is the portion of my "go kit" for test equipment.
instruments.JPG
 
I used a "J" Pole in an apartment and had great results with repeaters and made some Simplex contacts 30 miles or so with 75w. The picture shows it mounted on my deck at my house , when in my apartment I hung it from the eaves of porch, worked great and you could hardly see it.
 

Attachments

  • 20180819_110034.jpg
    20180819_110034.jpg
    5 MB · Views: 11

Latest posts

Back
Top