Before a brawl breaks out, here are images from my front door. There is no way to be sure people will not touch my equipment. The dipole is hidden in cable tv coax which has worked so far.

Is it possible to get on the roof? Yes. Do I or the maintenance manager want to? No.

The baking sheet is a good idea to start, but the radials are a better option if I can get wire that doesn’t sag. My dad worked for an am broadcast station and we dug up the radials to count them so the more the better.

Chris

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 9:24 AM Ken Hansen <ken@...> wrote:

Not quite sure why you felt the need to flex and get personal, but let me return the favor.

From your initial email:

"Good morning Andy and all: I have had some luck using large steel cookie and or cupcake sheets under a good Mag Mount, preferably lying on the ground but with some luck on a dining room table with visual access to the direction in which I wanted to transmit."

So you've worked HF with an 8 foot hamstick sitting on a "large steel cookie tray" on the dining room table? And were able to successfully work DX in the direction of your dining room window?

Well, as has been clearly established long before this email thread started "Anything can radiate" as proven by QSOs accomplished using 100 watt light bulbs or cantenna dummy loads.

And it has also been clearly established that during the Korean War, propagation was a bit better than it is today. While only going back to the 1980s, my local club, for a public demonstration took a hybrid transceiver and "loaded up" a mattress spring and worked a few neighboring states on HF... but I don't recall that leading to countless hams putting mattress springs up on the roof of their house instead of straining a Dipole or other more conventional antenna.

Given the opportunity to put a modest antenna on top of his apartment building I suspect few would cite a hamstick on a cookie tray as their "go-to" antenna. I suggested, as did a couple other responders, that he consider a hamstick Dipole (efficiency wont be great, but with elevation and horizontal polarization, it could be a great option with minimal visual impact).

So how big were those chain link fence sections? I suspect they were each close to a resonant quarter wave length or odd multiple thereof...

Take care, stay safe,

Ken, N2VIP

> On Apr 3, 2020, at 09:56, Steve & Judy Levine <sandjlevine@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Ken;
>
> So sorry if I offended yours sense of proper RF radiation and propagation.? You may have also objected to my use of two insulated sections of chain link fence mounted on 3 telephone poles with a bare-back KWM 2-A to run a nightly HF link on 40 meters between OSAN AB Korea to our CONUS MNCS in Missouri.
>
> Steve, KC1ASO

I'm looking to mount a 4x6 piece of copper clad board above the back half of my uBITX on standoffs, to provide a mounting surface for some additional circuits.? However, there are only two existing mounting points for standoffs (i.e. the two rear holes in the uBITX board).? So what I'm proposing is to drill a third hole in a position that would provide for some additional support for the additional PCB.??

The uBITX PCB is just two layers, right, top and bottom?? So if I drill in a place where there is ground plane on both sides (double and triple check first) I should be good... or is there something I'm missing?

I'm looking at drilling in the location I've circled in the attached photo.? It's in the ground plane right between where I've got the BCI filter and the AGC board installed.

Thoughts?? Again, this is to install a purely mechanical standoff.? An alternative (less invasive) is to use a plastic standoff, and just anchor it to the uBITX board with some hot glue (but it would still be screwed into the upper board.

Thanks!
Rob KC4UPR

This is all I could find in my files.

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 7:30 PM kc0wox Leeper <kc0wox@...> wrote:

See if this is what you want.

Leonard

See if this is what you want.

Leonard