[amsat-bb] Field Day antennas

[Bruce Nolte N3LSY <brucenol@xxxxxxx>]

I'm thinking about Field Day this year, and want to have a portable 
turnkey system ready to go, that is, to have all the antennas, 
feedlines, etc seperate from my home station. Last year I used a spare 
30 inch dish, along with my 3733 D/C, mounted on a PVC mast and 
crossboom. Steering was done manually, with the mast attached to the 
bumper of my truck. I ran short feedlines to my rig, which sat in a 
nearby pavillion on the fire department carnival grounds.  This part of 
the setup worked well, I sat in a pavillion 10 feet from the mast 
assembly and bumped the antenna west every 15 minutes or so as needed.

What didn't work so well was my uplink antenna, a 20 element Cushcraft, 
that I was unable to get to load properly, (I suspect it was optimized 
for 432 and 446 Mhz) and I had to resort to a 3 AM trip home to borrow 
my big KLM and refit it to my Field Day mast.  For this year I would 
like to find or make a new antenna that is reasonably portable, 
inexpensive, and compact, yet will give a good enough performance to 
provide a decent uplink signal with a 20 watt input, without having to 
resort to tearing my home station apart again.

 Any suggestions?








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