Friday 7 May 2010

Crazy XYL washing friendly steathly antenna

You may of heard of the Cobwebb antenna - http://www.g3tpw.co.uk/, this antenna is designed to work from 10-20m inc WARC bands, I really like the design, though I'd like something that worked 40m as well, and lose 10/12m as I have a vertical thats good for those bands.

How could I build an antenna that the GL would approve of ?

Looking out of my window earlier and I spotted my neighbours garden rotary clothes airer, it got me thinking about building a multi-band rotary dipole/quad loop which you can also hang the washing on, yes the clothes would de-tune the antenna, but I dont know about you bloggers, but I like to be out and about when the weather's good doing mobile radio or whatever.

Plus when the weather is no so good and raining, it figures there would be no washing out to dry, and so the drier/antenna could be used, as I generally like to stay in and work radio from home when it's wet out.

Crazy idea ?


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3 comments:

  1. QRP Station M6RDP7 May 2010 at 20:28

    Very ingenius idea. I like the idea of working with nature/the seasons/ the weather and that sort of thing. And I think it would get approval on the domestic front!

    BTW just looking at your flag counter. Very impressive already.

    Did you know G3SDW (Ken) has just started to blog? You can find it here:

    http://g3sdw.blogspot.com/

    73 Adam

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  2. PE4BAS, Bas7 May 2010 at 20:35

    Hi Paul, my XYL has a rotary clothes airer like the one on your picture. I did try to connect the coax to it. But I can't tune it. Even my MFJ259 can't find a dip. Any suggestions ;-)

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  3. Paul M0PCZ7 May 2010 at 23:19

    Hi Bas - My thinking is that I use the clothes line as a guide for the antenna wire, either by attaching the antenna wire to the clothes wire, or by twisting it round, like helically wound, depends on the size of drier used and the band, probably for 40m I would have to wind it.

    Each band would have a common feedpoint and a choke balun for use with unbalanced coax, I think a dipole design would be better than a full loop to keep the overall size down.

    Hi Adam - yes lots of flags but only 7 public watchers, and yes thanks for the link to Kens site, have posted on it.

    I might ask a favour off of you Adam, that QSL software you are using now, well I installed it and it said I needed Microsoft Netframework installed, so did that all 60 Mb for it to fail to install, happened twice now, so perhaps you could print a few cards off for me as I need to send 2 off soon, would get me out of trouble.

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