The QRPer Board

In Michigan the glaciers pretty much scrubbed us flat, no big rocks or mountains of which to speak. We do have trees, however. I have found the arborist throw lines and throwing weights to be a great alternative to fishing weights and line for throwing antennas up into trees. Plus sling shots are sometimes considered weapons and frowned upon in parks. 72/73

gang-

Here in the Northeast, we rarely have any trouble finding trees for antennas. Most of my portable operations are POTA activations. I rarely stray far from the truck when setting up. I use a homebrew pneumatic launcher ('spud gun'). Based on the pressure I charge it to, it's capable of anywhere from 40 feet to 90-100 feet of height. A battery-operated compressor makes quick work of that process. I cut the cigarette lighter plug away from the compressor and put on Anderson Power-poles. The battery used for powering the rig provides the juice. I use an EFHW antenna with this setup.

I'm not often operating in open terrain without trees, but it does happen. I use a simple drive-on mount and a painter's pole. Its parts came from Home Depot/Lowes. It's used to put a full-size quarter-wave whip and two radials (a poor-man's ground plane) at a feedpoint height of 12-13 feet. I'd initially used Buddipole components for the whip, but it bent alarmingly when it was being raised. It also developed reliability issues after exposure to salt air. (Acadia National Park). The whip now comprises 2 or 3 telescoping 6-foot tubing sections- starting with 3/4" and tapering down. The feedpoint assembly is homebrew and uses resin support blocks as insulators. Both these blocks and the aluminum tubing are available from DX Engineerings. (Disclaimer: just a happy customer.) This antenna now works on either 15M or 20M. The sections are coded with the necessary lengths for either band, The two radials use 'bullet' connectors (auto parts store) as links to add or subtract the outer 20M sections. There's no need for an antenna tuner or outboard SWR bridge, as the attached image shows. Those are just two more station accessories to bring along- and cables to forget to pack. You can guess how I know that.

I'd also built up a mast-mount that used the truck's ball-hitch. It was a thing of rugged beauty and used a length of 1"-13 threaded rod. Several concentric sections of fiberglass tubing (Max-Gain Systems) allowed a 1-1/4" mast to drop in. This was considerably more expensive to fabricate- mostly due to shipping charges. It also ruled out letting down the tailgate for operation from there. I've set it aside in favor of the simpler drive-on mount.

- Dave, K1SWL