Enjoying a little hobby time...

I have been a ham radio operator for some time now, almost 26 years, and enjoy tinkering with things associated with amateur radio operations.  I'm not all that good at it -- not like some of those old guys who haunt the aisles of flea markets and hamventions looking for chips, gadgets and gizzmos. And while I don't have a beanie with a helicopter rotor or a small radio antenna on top, I do take the hobby pretty seriously.  As an active member of the Shelby County Amateur Radio Emergency Services (S.C.A.R.E.S.) club, I enjoy working various "contests," field days and various civic-related activities with other club members.  I also serve as the training officer for our club.  That doesn't mean that I am the go-to guy in our club -- far from it.  There are some really smart guys associated with our group.  But I do what I can.

So it was a welcome relief that when we put together our training schedule for the year, one of the members suggested that we look into NVIS antennas.  I thought the description of this antenna sounded familiar, so I spent a little bit of time looking it up and found out that it is really the civilian name for the kind of antennas we had in our signal cage in the Army.  Go figure.  Well, I made the rounds of some old Army contacts to see if I could get one of these via the surplus markets, but didn't have any luck  Seems the Army is still using them.  I would have thought that they were out of the system by now. 

Anyway, I studied the diagram provided in an old Field Manual and told myself that I could build one of these pretty easily.  Now if it worked --- well, that would be another story.  I found some modern parts on line and made a couple of trips to the hardware store, and then spent the afternoon in the garage today  putting this together (it was actually warm enough out there that I didn't need the propane heaters).  Well, sorta together.  I am conducting training on this antenna in April so I kinda pre-assembled it.  We'll still have some things to do in April, and we'll still have to hook everything up and get it tuned.  Our goal is to use this antenna for the Ohio State Parks on the Air Contest in August.

I made some tweaks to the diagram and think this really came out pretty good.  This antenna is designed to be only 15' off the ground and looks like a teepee.  But, it can also be strung across some 3' high traffic cones or strung up in a tree and still work.  We will probably experiment with a couple of these applications to see what we can get.

I know it is hard to see much here, but I will take more pictures when we train in April so you'll get a better look at it.  Stay tuned.

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.(Unknown)

Hooah