FunComm EmComm and the Frankentenna

 Most of my time in Amateur Radio had been involved with EmComm.  While I am getting on in years I still feel the need to keep my skills up at least until the body breaks down to the point where I might become part of the problem and not part of the solution.  I keep my skill set up by using the same gear I would use in a disaster, for more fun things like portable operating, POTA and such.  I bring the same radios, antennas, power supplies etc.  I give them a good wringing out and it helps me maintain and improve my gear.  Each year I try to add/replace a few things. 

This year is no different, I sold my Icom IC-7300 and bought an IC-7300 MK2.  I've been using it in the house but plan on taking it out on my next adventure.  I am also redoing my Frankentenna.  My Frankentenna is a system of parts that can be assembled in various ways to accommodate different sites and different conditions.  This year is a big redo because I've slowly gotten enough parts to improve the whole system. One area that needed improvement was digital.  Digital modes have become the standard in EmComm and indeed are used quite frequently for FunComm.  I have 1,000's of FT8 contacts for POTA.  I have found that typical antennas used for events like POTA activations, do not stand up well to hard digital use.  Over the past year or so I have had to bump the power up because of poor band conditions to make contacts.  This would heat up Baluns and UnUn's until the SWR would start climbing. For FunComm you can just stop but for EmComm... Even though many devices/antennas are rated for 100 watts SSB, they are often only rated for 20 watts or less for digital.  My solution was to get a bigger UnUn - bigger is better right!

I started with a Palomar Engineering 9:1 UnUn rated at 1.5 kW which gave about 250 watts or so for high duty cycle digital modes like FT8, JS8Call and others.  I normally run this as an inverted "L" with a 73' antenna and a 55' counterpoise.  This gives me 160-6 meters.  I use a trailer hitch flag pole stand with a push-up pole for the vertical section and then find a tree for the horizontal. 

The flag pole mount has two 5/16-16 threaded attachment points.  I had been using a stretch velcro band to hold the UnUn to the holder but felt it wasn't secure. A plan came together.

I decided to make a mount to attach the UnUn to the flagpole holder.  I had a couple of pieces of scrap angle aluminum so a couple of hours later, I had this.

A couple of coats of Zinc Chromate Primer followed by a couple of coats of Flat Black and she's done. I can run this as an inverted "L" or a 28.5' random wire vertical antenna.  The shorter antenna is good for 40 thru 6 meters.

That's it for today.  Over the next few days I will be going over the Frankentenna and getting it ready.