1999 NOGA QRP Field Day - Setup

By Sam Billingsley, AE4GX and Mike Boatright, K04WX

Sam, AE4GX, Setting up his PLV Antenna

For a primary antenna we set the Parking Lot Portable Vertical (PLPV) up about 120 ft away to the West (over the septic tank fields great conductivity). Mike's new W3EDP 87 ft end-fed longwire with two sets of multiband quarterwave radials was used for the second HF station.

Sam, AE4GX, Setting up his PLV Antenna

We used Sam's new NOGA monofilament launcher to get over the trees. Lesson learned: The mono was binding during the release so the travel was limited. Two factors: light weight mono-line(1oz) and damp air (sticky mono-line on take-up spool). Solution: Mike pulled out enough mono-line to have the weight make it over the top of the tree before it got to the line wound on the spool.

Setting up the W3EDP Longwire Antenna

Sam held the launcher and aimed the weight while Mike stood about 30-40 feet away holding the mono about his head so it's looped from Sam to him and back to Sam. Success. Once we got the mono over the tree then we tied light nylon twine to the end and reeled the mono back to the launcher thus having the twine over the tree. We did this at four locations for two different antennas. We got faster with practice after the first one.

With the twine in place at the ends (both trees), with the help of our new NOGA "wuff-hong" with duct tape sticky-side out, it just a matter of attaching the wire and pulling it over and securing the ends. The W3EDP antenna is an Inverted-L, 87' long with about 30 ft up and the rest horizontal. NE to SW. The bottom of the vertical section of the L was attached to a tuner and the radials were attached to the tuner case. Coax ran from the tuner back to the "shack" (short about 20 ft).

For the W3EDP we put an LDG QRP autotuner and 1.2Ah battery in an upside down Tupperware rectangular storage box with the antenna and radials coming in from the bottom via slits in the Tupperware top (that is on the bottom). So we had a waterproof enclosure that was also clear so we can see the SWR LED's from the operating position about 15 feet away. Worked great until the battery died (7 volts) and the tuner microprocessor started acting funny. A battery change at 10 hours solved the problem.

The other inverted-L was about 200 ft long at 30 ft height and we used a manual tuner that Rick, K4RAB, brough to tune it for either 80 or 160 meters. Sam built one quaterwave radial for each band. It was located at the other tree (remote end of the W3EDP wire) and went East to a pine tree. It's the longest antenna any of us had ever put up. Coax run was about 100 ft.

Bob, WA1EDJ, had a 5-6 element 6 mtr Yagi in a roof mount that was already on the ground so we just had to move it to about 20-30 feet from the "shack".

WA1EDJ's 6M beam and tower

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