Sunday, July 20, 2014

RaDAR Contest Antennas: Many Choices!

Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio contests have many choices: bands, radios, antennas and locations among them. As for bands I focus on 40, 20, 15, 10 and 2 meter FM simplex. The antennas I have chosen in previous RaDAR contests are as follows:

April 2013
40 Meters: 88 foot Norcal Doublet
20, 15 meters: Alexloop

Nov 2013
40 Meters: 66 foot End Fed Half Wave
20 meters: 33 foot End Fed Half Wave

April 2014
40, 20, 15 and 10 meters Alexloop

In April 2014, I went with the Alexloop exclusively. I only had one local 40 meter contact with it. I lost a good part of the first hour trying for more. So I will go with something more substantial on 40 meters. I have experimented with 100 and 50 foot wires using a 9 to 1 Unun in the time since the April contest. I am leaning toward using the 100 foot wire as an inverted L to start off with. The L will have a 30 foot vertical component and a 70 foot horizontal component. With 70 feet in the horizontal I suspect it will handle NVIS nicely. In fact, I had the most glowing QRP report ever with that antenna on 40. Now the higher bands could be handled by the Alexloop or a 50 foot inverted L perhaps. Certainly the Alexloop has the least setup time. So more to ponder before the July 26th RaDAR contest. Watch out I have so many choices it is easy to change my mind.

Good Luck on the July 26th RaDAR Contest!

88 foot Norcal Doublet

33 foot end fed half wave for 20 meters

Alexloop

100 foot end fed wire