The QRPer Board

While in the eastern Montana Oilfield, there was tons of wind and very few trees. While on an outing I saw a guy using a kite to take photos of an area. This got me to wonder about lifting a wire for an antenna. My work load was very heavy and I really didn't have enough time to perfect this, I did however operate one time on 80 meters with a 66 foot wire lifted by a delta kite. I had about 20 minutes of success until the wind got too strong and I had to quit. The results and reports were better than i had expected. Night and day compared to my mobile antenna. I used a frac tank for a counterpoise/anchor. My swr was a flat 2:1 from 3.5-3.6 mhz. There are several good kites available and I have wondered about lifting a 160 meter EFHW.

Anyone have any experience with this? You can find a few YouTube videos and articles about this being done on a few different applications.

Chris W5OTR

W5OTR wrote: ↑Thu Jan 11, 2024 5:45 am I used a frac tank for a counterpoise/anchor.

I like it! One of the better phrases I learned when I moved to the South was, "Run what ya brung!", i.e. use what's at hand.

While I've never used a kite for radio, I've thought about it many times over the years, along with surplus weather balloons, particularly for calm winter nights on 160m.

Did you use a bleeder resistor for static? I'm from the Black Hills (western South Dakota) and am quite familiar with the winds and static out there.

73,
Mike

I did use a resistor-- the rig was a ft-897. Even with a bleeder I still had to discharge the antenna to ground every 5 minutes due to build up faster than the bleeder would allow.

If the UnUn is DC shorted, like this one

http://www.jumaradio.com/The-challengin ... ansformer/

and if the ground goes to a decent ground stake, there shouldn't be need for a bleeder since the antenna would effectively be connected to ground at DC; alternatively one may try a galvanic transformer

https://www.electrical4u.com/images/201 ... 767678.png

primary to coax, secondary to antenna and ground (or counterpoise system)

Balloons work too...
see https://www.eham.net/article/49051
Paul w0rw