Subject: 20m Motel antenna ideas
From: Ron, KU7Y (ku7y@qsl.net)
Date: Mon Jan 15 2001 - 21:22:58 EST 


Hi All,

Someone asked for ideas about a simple antenna to take into a hotel/motel
room.

Here is one that I have used with success.  I'll leave it to the folks that
understand antennas to tell if it **should** work or not!  And I am NOT
making any fancy claims about it.  Heck, I may have lost more power than I
radiated but at least I made QSO's!  :-)

Anyway, take a few (I used 5) wires that are about 16' long.

Lay out all but one on the floor and connect together in the center using
wire nuts.  (You knew that was coming, right?)

Take the one remaining wire and put one end as high as you can get it.  I
often use a window curtain rod as the top support.  Wind the left over
vertical wire around most anything that isn't metal.  I have used chair
legs, toilet paper rolls, plastic pipe and a fishing rod.  This gives you
something like a loading coil at the base of the vertical.

Again using wire nuts, connect the center conductor of a short piece of coax
to the vertical element at the bottom of the coil and connect the shield to
the center point of the radials.  Wire nuts work fine but I have even just
twisted the wires together when I didn't have the wire nuts.

Now connect the coax jumper to a antenna tuner and have fun.

I run the radials around as best I can.  Sometimes they have been just
"wadded" up here and there.

But I have made many QSO's that way.

Simple.  Cheap.  Easy to carry.

Efficient??  I doubt it.  But see the last sentence!  :-)

And in many of the old handbooks there was a little antenna made from a car
antenna.  One of the old ones that you had to pull up to get the weak
stations.  Anyway it was connected to a air wound coil that had a tap on it
and a big variable cap.

With the addition of some SWR detection circuit that should also work if you
want something more "correct"!  :-)

OK, I'm back in my hole.....

cul, Ron  KU7Y
Full time RVing somewhere in the West!
(Currently near Quartzsite, AZ)
A Proud AZScQRPion
***A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone***