07/04/2006 | W7AIA W7AIA Field Day Highlights

Space Station:

KE7HPW Lisa Bloomquist, a recently licensed Technician had the excitement of her life when she made a contact with the Space Station working KD5TVQ around 0830Z (0130 PDT) on 25 June 2006. The contact was made from the GOTA Station on the uplink frequency of 437.8 and the down link frequency of 144.8. Congratulations Lisa.

Tree Antenna:

The Clark County Amateur Radio Club, W7AIA, utilized an antenna that not many amateurs have heard of, or tried, it is called a Tree Antenna.
The tree is used as a Gamma or Shunt fed vertical. To make this work, we drove a three and a half inch deck screw into the tree about fifteen feet above the ground ensuring the screw made contact into a sap vein. A height of fifteen to twenty feet works best for this antenna. Attach a wire to the screw allowing it to extend two feet perpendicular to the tree. Tie a rope to the wire two-feet from the screw, then throw the other end of the rope over a nearby tree limb and allow the rope to drop to the ground.
Drive a three-foot ground rod in the dirt keeping it two feet out from the base of the tree. Attach the rope from the tree limb to the ground rod then to the wire to keep the wire tight. At the feed point end of the wire, we connected an MFJ-901B tuner set for wire operation and connected the tuner ground to the ground rod. To tune the antenna, an MFJ-269 SWR analyzer was connected to the tuner input and the tuner was adjusted for minimum SWR at the center of the operating band.
The antenna is capable of operating on 10-80 meters. Contacts were made with these ARRL Sections: Hawaii, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, California, VE6 and VE7.
The height of the tree should be more than thirty feet and any wire antenna tuner will work. Give it a try.
WB7ESV Dave Phemister -- AB7RW