As you can see below I am making the most of the BNM fiberglass fishing poles paired with the step in plastic fence posts. The longer 18 foot pole is available at some Walmarts and the step in post is available at Lowes or Tractor Supply. Yes you will be asked if you are catching any fish.
The three pole setup was for a Half Square for 20 meters or a upside down U dipole for 40 meters. The center pole was just for support. I used a Hendricks SOTA tuner for end tuning. As I recall I started on 40 and had one contact where I was pretty weak. I also made a contact on 20 meters. My operating was brief that day.
The next configuration was a 40 meter full wave loop. I used a Military mast tripod to hold up the feed point support of the loop and three fishing poles for the other supports. It was fed with 300 ohm line to the Hendricks BLT + tuner I just built. It did tune on 40 and I was very impressed with how quiet it was. Note that the loop on the fundamental is considered a NVIS antenna. My QSOs included KY, K4MTI local in Panama City, and Gainsville GA. The highlight was a QSO with my friend Thomas WD0HBR in Dothan 75 miles North. So I would say the loop was doing pretty well as NVIS antenna. At higher frequencies the loop would have a lower take off angle. I tried tuning the loop on 20 meters with the BLT with no luck. However, I did forget to try the low Z switch. As a last minute effort I hooked up the 300 ohm feedline to a LDG 4 to 1 balun and the LDG Z817 tuner. It did tune on 20. I snagged WA3WSJ pedestrial mobile in PA. I felt pretty good about that one. So I score the loop well for portable ops where you have room for it.
I enjoy Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio, Field Days, QRP, satellites, and CW. I have many friends in the hobby that make it fun. I will keep you posted on what I learn about amateur radio on this blog.
