Yay! It's up!
...If you can tune it...
...If you can load enough power into it...
( We did not attempt to stray beyond the General Class band limits because we prefer to remain within the General Class segment of any band we may utilize so as to maximize the number of stations that have the opportunity to work us. )
Configurations used:
Saturday and Sunday we used the ladder rigged straight up in the air as a vertical antenna. It sat on a 16-foot trailer which served as the ground plane. On Monday we moved the ladder into the side yard, and set it up in an A-Frame configuration for the primary radiator, separated from the ground plane by 2x4 lumber. It's ground plane was a closed aluminum step ladder, which in turn sat upon the seats of two metal folding chairs used as saw horses. We figured if the metal-to-metal contact between the step ladder and chairs was conductive enough to matter, fine, and if not, also fine. Provided we were able to tune it up and make contacts with relative ease we don't really care.
One of its nicest features was the ability to sweep a user-defined range of frequencies at the touch of a button. Sweetness itself I assure you! A comma separated file is also generated at the same time, so once saved under a unique filename, we are able to refer back to this sweep at a future date. Very nice! The only trouble we experienced was getting the device to recognize which com port was needed. That was very clunky and was the most time consuming part of using this device. Still, a great time-saver compared to using the MFJ-269 as we had in the past. And as already mentioned, about 3-times as accurate.
In the following scans taken with the AIM-4170 Antenna Analyzer:
The various screen shots shown below were generated by capturing a "screen print" in Paint, importing that JPEG into Adobe Photoshop, and then cropping and reducing the filesize.
We used this Strange Antenna both Saturday and Sunday. It seemed to work quite well on 20-meters.
We only used the A-Frame antenna for about an hour on Monday. It seemed like it was getting out about as well as the other one, but on Monday it just didn't seem people were interested in talking very much. We had difficulty in engaging in QSO's because it seemed like everyone kept saying "73" before we filled in the log. So we gave up. It was too much like pulling teeth! Besides, it was getting about time to start tearing down the antennas and station anyway. If we missed you, hope to work you next year!
There are many benefits to participating in, and promoting, The Strange Antenna Challenge. It provides a unique "hook" to help secure media attention, it provides learning opportunities to share you rknowledge of antennas systems and impedance matching techniques limited only by your imagination, is a wonderfully intreiging means of engaging the public, and demonstrates the extreme flexibility of the amateur radio service.
Unfortunately, not everyone that participates as a Satellite Station sends us pictures and tells us about the fun they are having, but the following fine folks have! Please, take a few minutes and see what fun some of your fellow hams had this year. And why not consider using this special event to promote your ham radio club next year?
Have we mentioned how much fun this is?
73 ~ Erik n0ew
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73 de Erik, nØew
© 2002 - 2009 Erik E. Weaver, n0ew
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