First QSO

[kd8ezj]

I just logged my first QSO ever!! I raised KD8LEB on the rootstown 146.895 repeater through echolink and was able to raise the repeater with the new HT to log it as a non-IP QSO. Woohoo!!!

[N8YX]

Sweet!

Now get thyself to 146.580 and give the crew a shout...

[kd8ezj]

I just tried. I don't think my little 5W HT with the duckie cuts over that far :(

[KG4CGC]

You could probably throw together a halfwave dipole fed with a quarterwave of twinlead attached to a balun attached to your coax.
Make the dipole part vertical and the twinlead part horizontal.

[kd8ezj]

The big problem with that is that I do not have any way of measuring SWR. I keep flipping through the FT-270 manual, but I do not think it has an SWR indicator built in :(

[kd8ezj]

You could probably throw together a halfwave dipole fed with a quarterwave of twinlead attached to a balun attached to your coax.
Make the dipole part vertical and the twinlead part horizontal.

Folded dipole, or just a dipole?

[N8YX]

You could probably throw together a halfwave dipole fed with a quarterwave of twinlead attached to a balun attached to your coax.
Make the dipole part vertical and the twinlead part horizontal.

Folded dipole, or just a dipole?

Just a dipole.

I've got a variety of multiband VHF/UHF antennas; one has your name on it. How much space do you have available?

[KG4CGC]

I've recently been sold on the type of dipole I described. It was easy enough to build out of ordinary household items except for the balun. Just happened to have that sitting around for the 2m version.
I was so impressed by its performance and simplicity that I decided to build one for the FMBCB with the dipole part in horizontal polarization. As such, it is bidirectional and now I'm pulling in stations from Atlanta to Charlotte and Asheville to Columbia. Two college stations that I didn't know existed, one at 600 watts and one running a mere 85 watts. The balun I used for it is a simple TV twinlead to 75? transformer and fed with RG6Q.

Now I want to see how far my reach could be by adding a reflector to it. I suppose the configuration is almost a doublet since the vertical part is half the length of one of the horizontal elements. In the 2m version, I spaced it away from the steel mast at a half wavelength plus 0.15. So that would be 468/146x12(x0.15) to get your dimensions in inches. Multiply by 12 after getting your result for 468/146 which gives your results in feet if you want to go to inches. Also, mount the antenna so that the top of the mast extends past the dipole by 5%.

Anyone want to straighten me out? Huh? I dare ya to knock this cigarette out of my mouth.

[N8YX]

We got Bro. Bill hooked up today.

He's now the proud owner of a TM-251/TM-451 pair, and he homebrewed a vertical antenna which worked quite well for yakking with our local bunch on 146.580. Even got 'DSG to jump into the conversation for a bit.

[KG4CGC]

Fine business!