This year’s ARRL Field Day was noticeably tinged with difficulty, problems, and loneliness. The goal of Field Day is to set up our radios with makeshift antennas and operate on emergency power while making as many contacts as possible for 24 hours. Adaptation in the face of adverse conditions is the heart of these field …
Tag Archives: apartment
4 Meters Up, 2 Meters Out
The store-bought 2m/70cm groundplane antenna I’ve had mounted on a broomstick inside my apartment now has a home outside where it can reach so many more places. After some brainstorming sessions in the hardware store, thinking of methods to mount 3 sections of military surplus fiberglass poles to my balcony railing, I figured out how …
Vee
Experiments with operating the radio at home continue. Had a wacky idea to use the anchor in the tree over my balcony as the support for a 20m inverted-V dipole, fed with 300ohm twinlead for multi-band matching. Brainstormed a plan to use a pair of bamboo fishing poles, anchored by pole brackets on the balcony …
Balcony Into the Sky
Getting more brazen with my antenna projects at my apartment. Used a reshaped coat hanger with a pulley and a lead weight to hook over a tree limb over my balcony. Now I have an anchor point to hang my 10m vertical dipole (or any other antenna that’ll fit). The anchor is below the peak …
Domicile Destination
Conundrum: stay in current apartment, sign a 12-month lease extension for the same rent stay in current apartment, sign a 6-month lease extension for $50 more move within a month into not-shitty apartment for roughly $100 more (at current market value) on a (hypothetically) better 1BR apartment in this area. Hmm.