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Please remember to use a hardhat and eye protection. It took a lead sinker bouncing off of a branch and back to my head to pound this lesson in. And be careful what is on the ground across the branch and in directions a ricochet off of the trunk might take.
For a half-wavelength dipole, you’d want to add and subtract 90 degrees to get the directions where the signal will be the strongest.
However, I haven’t used a multiband end-fed antenna before, and this article says that the radiation pattern varies by the band: https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/antennas-propagation/end-fed-wire-antenna/multiband-end-fed-half-wave-efhw-antenna.php. I don’t know if that’s a practical concern or not. The manufacturer’s instructions may have more specific information, or the ARRL handbooks may help. And of course I’m sure others here have used that type of antenna and can provide better insight.
Those the broadside directions, as opposed to the directions the end would be pointing, right?
Can you also go between two trees? (I know that means running the feed line across or under the ground, and lawn mowers are a notorious hazard to cables across the ground.)
Here are the two azimuth map generators on the web that I know of:
1: https://clublog.org/greatcircle.php generated https://clublog.org/greatcircle.php?&sa=FN42&saa=1 (This is the one I use.)
2: https://www.wm7d.net/az_proj/az_html/azproj_form_long.shtml or https://www.wm7d.net/az_proj/az_html/azproj_form_short.shtml which generated this:
I added my support through the legislature web site, and then (at 11:59:22) I sent e-mail to their address, and then I forwarded the message to my local rep.
I am sad to report that Electronic Surplus Services on Candia Road in Manchester went out of business. It was probably about 2 months ago, but I just found out when I went up there today to get a few parts. I think that Electronics Plus in Littleton, MA is the closest (to Nashua) electronic parts store. We also still have the hobby store in the Apple Tree Mall in Londonderry which stocks a small selection of Radio Shack parts, You Do It Electronics in Newton, MA, and Microcenter in Cambridge, MA.
Here are pictures of:
* The 2m and 70cm counterpoises after removing ring terminal insulators, crimping, and soldering.
* Installing the 70cm counterpoise on a Yaesu FT-60R dual-band HT. Note the heat-shrink tubing covering the crimped-and-soldered connection.
* After installation of 70m counterpoise.
* After switching to the 2m counterpoise. Note the heat-shrink tubing on the end of the wire. The hole in the end of the tubing was sealed with a tiny drop of “Liquid Electrical Tape.”
(The SMA-BNC adapters I normally use with this xcvr were removed for clarity.)Thanks, Fred. I got larger terminals at an auto parts store and was able to finish the assembly for 2m and 70cm. I need to look at the HT manual, or the data I used for chirp to program the HT, so that I can see which repeaters are 2m and which repeaters are 70cm, so that I know which counterpoise to use.
Soldering the wire to the crimp part of the connector is important, especially if the wire is thinner than the connector was designed for!
I took pictures during process and will add them here.
I have SMA-BNC/BNC-SMA adapters on the HT and the whip antenna and a mag-mount antenna so that I can do a quick BNC connect-disconnect to change antennas. This let me add the counterpoise between the whip antenna and the SMA-BNC adapter, making adding and removing the counterpoise automatic when adding and removing the whip antenna; there’s no extra part to handle or store.
