First contact(s)

[KE5PQD]

I recently ie on the 2nd bought and installed a FT-857D in my pickup, I am waiting and saving to buy a screwdriver antenna, right now I have a predator tuned to 10 M I figured I'd just listen 'till I installed my screwdriver. Well, listening led to wanting to talk. so I scraped together some items, a 18' coax jumper, some electric fence wire, some electic fence insulators etc and made a 20M dipole, with some tuning and cutting I had the SWR dow to around 1.5-1 or so. I heard K8RNM calling CQ so I answered, surely I'd never reach him on this hodge podge antenna.....he called back with my partial call, he said he couldn't pull me out very well, so we quickly exchanged calls and QTH, and said 73. Well scanning the 20M band I heard another CQ, I tried again, but this time he made out my call and I his but both ends quickly deteriorated. Well I was pumped, WOW, my first contacts on this dipole that took all of 30 minutes to throw up. Well continuing to scan, I heard W2IW, calling CQ. I answered, he came back, we proceded to have a 34 minute ragchew. OK I'm hooked. I'll be off to the candy store Friday to buy some proper dipole fixings. My rig is mounted in my pickup, but I'm going to put these antennas up where I can park near and hook up and use them. What an awsome hobby. CW is next.

[KI4WEJ]

Congrats and welcome! A word to the wise, it only gets better! I've only been Hamin since May but I've already got a respectable Shack up and running so have fun making QSO's and shopping for new equipment!

[N2RJ]

Congratulations!! Hope you get a better antenna up.

One word of advice - if possible, use open wire or window line (ladder line). It's cheap and low loss. Only thing is you'll need a balun or tuner with balanced wire feed to use it.

[ka0sog]

Great bunch of fun coming your way.

[N8ODF]

Welcome & enjoy this wonderful hobby

[kn4ds]

I look forward to catching you on the bands!

[W4INF]

Congrats- and you have been bitten by the RF bug.. I remember building a ground mounted, ground plane wire , vertical antenna with my daughter. To my surprise I worked DX with it! First try too! Holy cow- after that, Ive been non stop tinkering with crap day and night on my free time and having a ball!

You can read about it here:
http://rogertango.com/articleread.aspx?idnumber=83452542

Thing is, I was totally expecting this thing to NOT work! It was not based on anything more than a 2m ground plane using the same formula, and mounted right on the ground to boot!

I have a screwdriver antenna mounted on a chain link fence for a counterpoise now, that too is not supposed to work, but it does. Maybe not gangbusters, but it does work FB.

Andrew

[KC7YPJ]

I'll second the advice to use balanced line, cheap 300ohm twinlead can be had for around $18 for 100', it will easily handle 100w, throw in a cheap tuner like a mfj 901b and your set to experiment with wire antenna to your hearts content, my first hf antenna was 17g galvanized electric fence wire 65' long attatched to 10' poles (slide together poles from a camping shade tent) on the roof of the house fed with super cheap 300ohm line, made a fair number of contacts with it before it got upgraded (for 1 month then I moved)
warning it can become adictive, esp if you start playing with digital modes #http://www.ycars.org #presentation page can get you started, thepsk31 presentation has allot of good info

And congrats on discovering the joy of AR, may it only get better for you!!!

[ka0use]

Quote[/b] (KE5PQD @ Nov. 07 2007,07:09)]I recently ie on the 2nd bought and installed a FT-857D in my pickup, I am waiting and saving to buy a screwdriver antenna, right now I have a predator tuned to 10 M I figured I'd just listen 'till I installed my screwdriver. Well, listening led to wanting to talk. so I scraped together some items, a 18' coax jumper, some electric fence wire, some electic fence insulators etc and made a 20M dipole, with some tuning and cutting I had the SWR dow to around 1.5-1 or so. I heard K8RNM calling CQ so I answered, surely I'd never reach him on this hodge podge antenna.....he called back with my partial call, he said he couldn't pull me out very well, so we quickly exchanged calls and QTH, and said 73. Well scanning the 20M band I heard another CQ, I tried again, but this time he made out my call and I his but both ends quickly deteriorated. Well I was pumped, WOW, my first contacts on this dipole that took all of 30 minutes to throw up. Well continuing to scan, I heard W2IW, #calling CQ. I answered, he came back, we proceded to have a 34 minute ragchew. OK I'm hooked. I'll be off to the candy store Friday to buy some proper dipole fixings. My rig is mounted in my pickup, but I'm going to put these antennas up where I can park near and hook up and use them. What an awsome hobby. CW is next.
[QUOTE]

whoa, now ya done it!

welcome!

[KD4IFB]

Good deal!! Just remember even a great radio can be total crap without a good antenna.. Get it as high as you can and get that SWR as low as possible..I have 80,40,20,and 17 meters the 20 is a rotatable half wave that I built out of tubeing... the others are wire 70 to 80 ft high, avg.1:1.. A real good investment for antenna work is a good analyzer... You definately wont regret getting one of those.. Good luck and 73 http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[K3STX]

Congrats!!

What I got out of this story is that you have an antenna that works,, and you want to change it. What the hell is wrong with you!! http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

paul

[K0RGR]

If you want to talk about antennas in a tree - here's one of our club members, and how he spends nice afternoons in the park...

W0VLZ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUeJOuu5oUE)

Maybe this will give you some ideas. Instead of hard mounting those antennas, make them portable. Go find a 'hotspot' if you can. I remember one Field Day when I was mobile, I was driving along when I found a spot where all the radio signals suddenly came up a couple S units. I stopped there and called CQ, and for the next two hours, I was handling a regular pileup. Once I drove away from that spot, it was a struggle to work people. All I know is that it was very close to a canal that might have contained a little sea water.

[W0LPQ]

7YPJ ... small world indeed ... lived not far from Leslie when I lived in Cedar from '77 to '81. Fun guy he was..

Bill, W0LPQ/9

[KB3ILN]

I made my first HF contact last night
with my TS 520. It was to a station in Texas ( I am in Pa. ) on a
simple wire antenna run up a 31 foot fiberglass pole.

Ed