Dan KF4DRU and Bill KF4EHP stand beside their "Canoe Windom" Strange Antenna!
Hi Erik!
We originally planned to use two 17-foot aluminum canoes as a dipole and had applied for the special event call sign of W2C, for "With 2 Canoes."
At the last minute a fellow HAM offered a third 17’ aluminum canoe. As every good HAM knows bigger is better, when it comes to antennas that is, so we decided to set them up as an Off Center Fed Dipole!
The three canoes were set out at the home of KF4EHP (Bill) atop 6 plastic sawhorses at about 32-inches above the ground. At the feed point we used a commercial 4:1 balun and a short jump lead between the second and third canoes to complete the "Canoe Windom" (No patents applied for !)
After some initial teething problems, including a bad connection in the commercial balun which required re-soldering, and RF on the audio from the feed line that necessitated a few turns to be placed in the coax, we were up and running!
The "Canoe Windom" was operated from inside the home of KF4EHP (Bill), with myself, KF4DRU (Dan), as the back up operator using an Icom IC-706 MkII G running 100 watts through a LDG Z-11 Pro auto tuner and 50’ of RG-8X to the feed point. Amazingly the Canoe Windom tuned up on all of the HAM bands from 6m through 75m.
We had a great time participating in the Strange Antenna Challenge, the most fun was the reaction of the other operators when they found out what we were using for an antenna!
A special thanks goes to KI4DIJ (Ron) and KF4ZQB (Wendy) for the loan of their 17-foot aluminum canoe to complete the "Canoe Windom," along with their moral and physical support in helping to transport the antenna "components."
73 de Dan KF4DRU
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73 de Erik, nØew
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