Balcony Op: Maybe a new “1B” contest category! As the summer/fall season evaporates, opportunities for outdoor activities will diminish for most of us who no longer wish to tackle the hard weather. POTA, SOTA activities and the likes won't be as easily accessible for some of us and it will be time to look at setting up a station to operate from home. Yet, for some of us apartment dwellers, it will be a challenge. If you happen to have a balcony, as I do, you might want to experiment with different kinds of antennas in order to find one that is acceptably efficient to enjoy the opening of the bands during this high spot in the 25th solar cycle. I have done so over the years, using Ham Sticks, Bird Cages, different loops, base-loaded verticals as well as centre-loaded ones, and various home-made wire antennas, end-fed and bent dipoles. A word of advice, do not use the metal on your balcony to ground your antenna. On HF it will propagate all through your building, which I know that from experience! So, what are you going to use for a ground plane? It's not a problem with wire-dipoles as the two elements balance the load. My good friend Jos, VE3EUS, uses a 2x2 metal plate for his vertical mobile Hustler antennas. I have several mobile verticals and I wanted to try a plate for a ground plane on the balcony. I put out a call on the CW Pot Lid Net, (Sundays, 7:30pm, on 6 meters 50.090 MHz) mentioning that I was looking for a 3x3 feet metal plate. Mike, VE3FFK who was attending the net, offered me a 3x3 galvanized steel plate that he was no longer using. I jumped at the offer and brought this plate home. I laid the plate on the floor of the balcony, but I didn't have a proper magmount to use at the time. So, I ordered a magmount from Radioworld in Toronto. In the meantime, I had a trunkmount that I had been using on my Jeep. I proceeded to install this magmount on the edge of the metal plate and used a center-loaded Hustler antenna with a 20 meter resonator for a first test. Am I being heard? I brought up the Reverse Beacon (RBN) website on my computer and started to send general calls (CQ) in Morse code on the 20 meter band using 85 watts from my IC-7000. I had responses on the RBN coming from the west and the south, my balcony is facing south, Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, and such in those directions. But what was becoming interesting after a few calls were the returns from Alberta, CostaRica, and one from Wales in the UK at 5000 km! When I received my mag mount from Radioworld, I immediately set it up at the center of the plate using the same 20m Hustler resonator. RBN returns were only in the 1000 to 1200 km range from the west and the south. In the picture below, you see the metal plate and the trunk mount on the edge of the plate (bottom of pic). But there is more. Following advice from Mike to secure the plate so that high winds would not carry it away, I found a heavy metal umbrella support which I placed in the middle of the steel plate. I then mounted the mag base on top of this support and installed a quick disconnect stub on the mount. The Hustler antenna is a center-loaded antenna and you can see the bottom long arm of it on the trunk mount. At the right-bottom of the picture you see the matching case for the quick disconnect stub attached to a 20 meter base-loaded mobile antenna. I did several tests to compare both antennas on the mag moung and on the trunk mount and found that the center-loaded Hustler on the trunk mount provided better efficiency. I think that the capacitive coupling of the mag month is not as efficient as the direct coupling of the trunk mount with screws directly into the metal plate providing a better ground. Another effect of the trunk mount is directivity. When I had this trunk mount installed at the back of my Jeep I would point the front of the car in the direction of the intended azimuth and had good results. I'm wondering if the same directional effect comes into play with the trunk mount at the rear of the plate. Further test will tell, as I hope to reach out to South America, Argentina and Chile as I did with my bent dipoles, reaching out to 10,000 km or more. Jos, mentioned above, is reaching out to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all over Europe on FT8 or CW with his 2x2 metal plate. With reference to the title of this article, Jos suggested that we have a new category for us, operators on a balcony, plagued with limited installations: possibly a new “1B” category for one operator on a balcony. Good laugh! Keep on experimenting!
Maurice-André, VE3VIG PS - As I finished writing this, I made a nice CW contact with Juan EA1X in Spain and with Mike EA6UP in the Balearic Islands using the Hustler on the trunk mount. REFERENCE: RBN - https://www.reversebeacon.net
Balcony Op: Maybe a new “1B” contest category! As the summer/fall season evaporates, opportunities for outdoor activities will diminish for most of us who no longer wish to tackle the hard weather. POTA, SOTA activities and the likes won't be as easily accessible for some of us and it will be time to look at setting up a station to operate from home. Yet, for some of us apartment dwellers, it will be a challenge. If you happen to have a balcony, as I do, you might want to experiment with different kinds of antennas in order to find one that is acceptably efficient to enjoy the opening of the bands during this high spot in the 25th solar cycle. I have done so over the years, using Ham Sticks, Bird Cages, different loops, base-loaded verticals as well as centre-loaded ones, and various home-made wire antennas, end-fed and bent dipoles. A word of advice, do not use the metal on your balcony to ground your antenna. On HF it will propagate all through your building, which I know that from experience! So, what are you going to use for a ground plane? It's not a problem with wire-dipoles as the two elements balance the load. My good friend Jos, VE3EUS, uses a 2x2 metal plate for his vertical mobile Hustler antennas. I have several mobile verticals and I wanted to try a plate for a ground plane on the balcony. I put out a call on the CW Pot Lid Net, (Sundays, 7:30pm, on 6 meters 50.090 MHz) mentioning that I was looking for a 3x3 feet metal plate. Mike, VE3FFK who was attending the net, offered me a 3x3 galvanized steel plate that he was no longer using. I jumped at the offer and brought this plate home. I laid the plate on the floor of the balcony, but I didn't have a proper magmount to use at the time. So, I ordered a magmount from Radioworld in Toronto. In the meantime, I had a trunkmount that I had been using on my Jeep. I proceeded to install this magmount on the edge of the metal plate and used a center-loaded Hustler antenna with a 20 meter resonator for a first test. Am I being heard? I brought up the Reverse Beacon (RBN) website on my computer and started to send general calls (CQ) in Morse code on the 20 meter band using 85 watts from my IC-7000. I had responses on the RBN coming from the west and the south, my balcony is facing south, Wisconsin, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, and such in those directions. But what was becoming interesting after a few calls were the returns from Alberta, CostaRica, and one from Wales in the UK at 5000 km! When I received my mag mount from Radioworld, I immediately set it up at the center of the plate using the same 20m Hustler resonator. RBN returns were only in the 1000 to 1200 km range from the west and the south. In the picture below, you see the metal plate and the trunk mount on the edge of the plate (bottom of pic). But there is more. Following advice from Mike to secure the plate so that high winds would not carry it away, I found a heavy metal umbrella support which I placed in the middle of the steel plate. I then mounted the mag base on top of this support and installed a quick disconnect stub on the mount. The Hustler antenna is a center-loaded antenna and you can see the bottom long arm of it on the trunk mount. At the right-bottom of the picture you see the matching case for the quick disconnect stub attached to a 20 meter base-loaded mobile antenna. I did several tests to compare both antennas on the mag moung and on the trunk mount and found that the center-loaded Hustler on the trunk mount provided better efficiency. I think that the capacitive coupling of the mag month is not as efficient as the direct coupling of the trunk mount with screws directly into the metal plate providing a better ground. Another effect of the trunk mount is directivity. When I had this trunk mount installed at the back of my Jeep I would point the front of the car in the direction of the intended azimuth and had good results. I'm wondering if the same directional effect comes into play with the trunk mount at the rear of the plate. Further test will tell, as I hope to reach out to South America, Argentina and Chile as I did with my bent dipoles, reaching out to 10,000 km or more. Jos, mentioned above, is reaching out to Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all over Europe on FT8 or CW with his 2x2 metal plate. With reference to the title of this article, Jos suggested that we have a new category for us, operators on a balcony, plagued with limited installations: possibly a new “1B” category for one operator on a balcony. Good laugh! Keep on experimenting!
As I finished writing this, I made a nice CW contact with Juan EA1X in Spain and with Mike EA6UP in the Balearic Islands using the Hustler on the trunk mount. REFERENCE: RBN - https://www.reversebeacon.net
Maurice-André, VE3VIG PS