dipole antenna for camping

[BJ radionut]

Mkube: If you watched that video, you've seen just how easy it will be to get on the air from a camping site.
Find a picnic table to set radio and tuner on. Hopefully under a tall tree.
Take single wire (60ft long +/-) straight up as high as you can get it pull any extra to another near-by tree (inverted "L" shape) but that's not even critical.
The whole wire can slope from op station to any tree or support as long as it's high enough that someone does not choke or trip over it.
Ground: Short 2 or 3 ft copper tube with end flaten pounded into ground close as possible to radio and tuner. Pour some water around it!
Connect everything correctly...Tune up and your ON.
I have done that so many times, I can not even count them....
Problem with dipoles camping to do it right...(3) support locations! Dipoles work poorly if center feed location is lower than ends...
Plus and you said 80m operation with dipole....That's 120ft long!
Even 40m takes almost 70ft of space!
I don't know to many camp grounds where you have that much space, without running the antenna through someone else's spot...
You can always add counterpoise wires to the ground rod or tuner to improve things...but I have worked the world , doing just how I have explained and QRP...let alone with 100 Watts.
Enjoy
All the Best
Gary/W9FNB

 

[2RT307]

This thread is cracking me up, but I'm actually learning some stuff at the same time. Spliff = Blunt. :laugh: Never ever heard the term crocodile clip, so I assumed they don't have crocs in the UK. Turns out alligators nor crocodiles are native to the UK. Unless you count a bathtub.

Police find 8ft ALLIGATOR splashing around in bath during raid on house... in Cheshire | Mail Online

Can you use a crocodile clip to hold your spliff?

And please, keep on with the antenna ideas... I could use a road trip/camping antenna myself!

73,
Brett

 

[KD2GOE]

yeah I watched that video was really nice I'm starting to get some parts together to make what he made. the hardest part I think it's going to be finding that
Tunning capacitor but I know a few people with old radios I think I can snag one out of.

as for the 40/80 meters I still have my technician class so it was mostly going to be four dx'ing more interested in trying to hit something on 10 meters if conditions allow.
as for getting the antenna up the tree I have a potato cannon at my ready.

 

[KD2GOE]

@rt307. Yeah i am a noob :blushing:
but I am learning a lot, just through this thread and all the information on the Internet unfortunately there's a lot of crap i have to weed through.

 

[2RT307]

@rt307. Yeah i am a noob :blushing:
but I am learning a lot, just through this thread and all the information on the Internet unfortunately there's a lot of crap i have to weed through.

LOL I'm a two day old General, so I can relate. Lots of knowledge here though, and I'm reading/watching along with you. There is a ham fest going on here in Plano, TX in two weeks. If you have one coming up in your area, maybe you could snag a junker tuner to get the parts you need? Or check with your local club to see what someone has in their junk box. Ya never know!

73,
Brett

 

[GnG8d]

Not to completely sidetrack this thread, but who has time for radio when camping? I see this topic come up from time to time, and I always have to wonder ...... why?

edit________
I scrolled back and caught the "blunt" part of the thread, I get it now.

 

[KD2GOE]

Not to completely sidetrack this thread, but who has time for radio when camping? I see this topic come up from time to time, and I always have to wonder ...... why?

edit________
I scrolled back and caught the "blunt" part of the thread, I get it now.

It is the only chance I have to get out of the city and try to work the radio...

And there will be a few blunts strong up

 

[BJ radionut]

@rt307. Yeah i am a noob :blushing:
but I am learning a lot, just through this thread and all the information on the Internet unfortunately there's a lot of crap i have to weed through.

No foul being a newbie or as I have put it many times here Young Jedi....
Your just getting to the FUN stuff.
You'll do just fine with this set-up for 10m... All the Better.
To the ground stake add a few 8ft radials. Hold them down with extra tent stakes...pieces of old coat hangers pushed down...even a few logs...just so people don't trip over them.
And young Jedi with a TS-2000 what about 6m? Been pretty good here of late. A 6m horizontal dipole (I posted a link for someone few days ago)...A good little 2m GP can be made with a SO239 connector! Google is your friend...Look around on this forum, I know it's been posted before.
More Later
XYL just got home
73
Gary

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

Not to completely sidetrack this thread, but who has time for radio when camping? I see this topic come up from time to time, and I always have to wonder ...... why?

Usually while camping there is lots of time to do whatever. Camping is a time to chill out and relax not run all around seeing this and doing that. That's called a vacation.:laugh: I need to take my 6m and 2m SSB gear if I go where I did last year camping. I was playing around with my handheld GPS and thought something was wrong with it as it was a few years since I had last played with it. It kept telling me two grid squares I was in started with a G and I just knew that was not possible. After looking things up I found out I was indeed in GN05 and GN06 with no radio gear. :headbang Look up GN05 and GN06. I'll give you a hint: EXTREME north-eastern Nova Scotia up in Cape Breton Island. The population, especially in GN05, is very low and the ham population even lower and the number of hams on 6m or 2m SSB could be counted on one hand and have a couple fingers left over. Leave it to me to go to a couple rare grid squares during summer Es season without any gear. :headbang

 

[KD2GOE]

No foul being a newbie or as I have put it many times here Young Jedi....
Your just getting to the FUN stuff.
You'll do just fine with this set-up for 10m... All the Better.
To the ground stake add a few 8ft radials. Hold them down with extra tent stakes...pieces of old coat hangers pushed down...even a few logs...just so people don't trip over them.
And young Jedi with a TS-2000 what about 6m? Been pretty good here of late. A 6m horizontal dipole (I posted a link for someone few days ago)...A good little 2m GP can be made with a SO239 connector! Google is your friend...Look around on this forum, I know it's been posted before.
More Later
XYL just got home
73
Gary

Thats cool did not think of 6 meters. i may be able to use parts of the ground plane from my Antron99 there just laying in the basement right now..

 

[BJ radionut]

Thats cool did not think of 6 meters. i may be able to use parts of the ground plane from my Antron99 there just laying in the basement right now..

Here it is again 6m dipole
6 Meter Horizontal Dipole Antenna Project by KK5ID

2m GP
BUILD A GROUND PLANE ANTENNA FOR 2 METERS AND MORE - SIMPLE AND EASY!

start checking your old antenna parts...junk box antennas can work sometimes better than store bought!
Most certainly when installed standing in snow or middle of a storm and it's freezing cold or 100 deg. in the shade
Let the RadioFUN begin
All the Best
Gary

 

[GnG8d]

Usually while camping there is lots of time to do whatever. Camping is a time to chill out and relax not run all around seeing this and doing that. That's called a vacation.:laugh:

I guess. My wife an I camp a couple times a month and I never think of radio. When she starts breakfast, I feed/water the horses. Then we saddle up and ride out (by our selves or with a group if we are with one). When we get back in it's time to get a fire going for the meat and feed/water horses again. After dinner it's time for some beers and laughs at the fire.

When I was a kid, Dad and I (sometimes my little sister) would fish most of the day and mom would cook what we caught. Mom liked to take in some area attractions so Dad would oblige her and skip fishing 1 or 2 days for that, but I just never think of camping and radio in the same thought. It just seems strange to me I guess.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

It depends on how you go camping. Back in the woods on horses is just swapping one job for another. Taking a camper trailer to a campground is another matter altogether. At over 50 and having done the former I have now switched to the latter.

 

[W5LZ]

I don't see the attraction in 'camping out' or 'roughing it'. I've done it, or actually I'm old enough that I've done what most people call 'camping out' because that wasn't all that unusual at one point in time. That didn't make much sense, did it? Oh well.
I never had a horse so don't know much about taking care of'em. That's okay, I guess, so most of the time if I wanted to 'get away from things' I did it on foot. Meaning if you wanted to have something YOU carried it with you. It also meant that if you needed something to power or make that thingy work, you carried that too. That alone can double your 'burden', what you were tote'ing, so camping out wasn't very convenient, sort of? Oh well. I'm very happy with 'convenience'! Not having to worry about being able to have/do something I wanna do, because I didn't bring the thingy that did that, because it was too inconvenient to carry. Make sense?
That camping out, ot roughing it, just ain't very attractive for me. That's cuz' I've done it and why would I wanna do it again if I don't have too?? I just don't understand you people who wanna make things harder than they have to be. You people are weird...
- 'Doc


(There's all kinds of 'tricks' to that campin out thingy! For instance, rub a bar of soap on the bottom of pans you use for cooking on an open flame. The clean up later is MUCH easier. Just one'a them 'old timey' thingys then old farts know about...)

 

[BJ radionut]

I don't see the attraction in 'camping out' or 'roughing it'. I've done it, or actually I'm old enough that I've done what most people call 'camping out' because that wasn't all that unusual at one point in time. That didn't make much sense, did it? Oh well.
I never had a horse so don't know much about taking care of'em. That's okay, I guess, so most of the time if I wanted to 'get away from things' I did it on foot. Meaning if you wanted to have something YOU carried it with you. It also meant that if you needed something to power or make that thingy work, you carried that too. That alone can double your 'burden', what you were tote'ing, so camping out wasn't very convenient, sort of? Oh well. I'm very happy with 'convenience'! Not having to worry about being able to have/do something I wanna do, because I didn't bring the thingy that did that, because it was too inconvenient to carry. Make sense?
That camping out, ot roughing it, just ain't very attractive for me. That's cuz' I've done it and why would I wanna do it again if I don't have too?? I just don't understand you people who wanna make things harder than they have to be. You people are weird...
- 'Doc


(There's all kinds of 'tricks' to that campin out thingy! For instance, rub a bar of soap on the bottom of pans you use for cooking on an open flame. The clean up later is MUCH easier. Just one'a them 'old timey' thingys then old farts know about...)

TOTALLY Understand Doc...MY XYL's idea of "roughing it" nowadays is"
Holiday Inn instead of Hilton
All the Best
Gary