Fiberglass Pole on the Air! (No contacts, then contest…)

Finally got around to ordering materials and using some wire! With the weather turning into full fall soon and wanting to finally use the gear I just got, it was off to a local park.

It's an antenna! As assembled at dusk with the parking lot LED street lights just turned on.

 
What's in this antenna setup?

  • Salvaged wire from a ~16' industrial sensor cable
  • 22' surplus BNC-to-RA-BNC coax (Fair Radio Sales)
  • 16' green windsock telescoping fiberglass pole (Amazon, direct link)
  • Cheapest speaker stand (Amazon, direct link)
  • Spare chunk of 1-1/2" sch40 PVC pipe
  • Panel mount BNC connector with wire and WAGO 221 lever-nut

Overall, the outing was amusing, but didn't make any contacts. Building up to 0000Z and the start of CQ WW SSB, I heard KG5DRT, K4WY, WA5ZIJ, LU4FPZ and jotted them down in my notebook. Attempting to get back to POTA activators unfortunately didn't result in any contacts. Ragchew and contesters also weren't worth much opportunity. Then, at 0000Z the band right exploded and it was time for me to move on to my next plans for the evening.

As for the antenna setup, it worked well enough to be a starting point for tuning. The 1-1/2" pipe isn't quite the right fit. 1-1/4" might be too small, but I'd need to procure a chunk to see how things actually fit. Definitely planning on using the base mechanical configuration in the future, including VHF+ work.

Supplies before assembly. Barely visible are the 4x 22 AWG in the bottom-center of the frame.

Immediate tuning as assembled with untrimmed vertical, 3x radials, and coax connected.

Operating position in the park

Shack-on-a-box. Ground was only a little damp and my leg definitely fell asleep.

Gathered a bundle of the vertical at the top to make it a bit shorter. Z-817 didn't mind operating 20m here.

System broken down and stacked up looks pretty compact. Not light, though.

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