Wet weather antennas

[Abounds5]

I realize that most qrp activity takes place in dry weather, albeit sometimes cold, but in monitoring your website I notice that many of the antennas, due to their qrp nature (lightweight), are not waterproof. Can these antennas be protected in some manner without adding significant weight or should you have an antenna specifically designed to handle wet weather.

Appreciate your thoughts or point me to any website that might address this question.

Regards Andrew KD5CQ

[k8zfj]

Andrew
I typically use a linked or trapped
efhw .traps and unun enclosed in heartstrings.
never an issue in wet weather
72s k8zfj

[Brian - K3ES]

Hi Andrew,

I use wire antennas for my QRP work. I did one outing with my antenna exposed to steady rain (I sat in the truck with feedline running in through the door seal after a generous drip loop). I noticed two issues. First, it was the only time I recall having RF in "shack" issues while running 5 watts. I noticed keying anomalies and tingling fingers. Second, there were issues with wandering SWR as water made its way into the unun. This particular antenna had just an open-ended covering of heat shrunk tubing over the unun.

Both problems went away and never reappeared after the antenna dried out. For my home brew antennas, I have been using a generous amount of hot-melt glue to encapsulate the unun and electrical connections. It seems to resist water issues in the rain.

Best 73 de Brian - K3ES

[KL7MJ]

I have an EFRW in my back yard that I run a length of coax out to through the back door. I covered the unun box with a ziplock baggie (poked a small hole in one corner for the wire, and a larger hole in the other corner for the tie off - the radial and the coax come out the open bottom of the baggie). I haven't noticed any problems with it yet.

Mike, KL7MJ