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hayesfamily

RV Antenna Installation - Best Place to Drill

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WAYNE --- I like you. The XYL said we could never be in a camp ground side by side cause she thinks we would get in trouble. 

I said we would be good then she reminded me about the time I loaded up the Telephone wire that was coming into the house. We werent using it anymore and I thought it would make a good LONG wire. Well, needless to say every phone in the neighborhood rung at 130 in the morning but 160 was WIDE OPEN into Nicaragua. 

My excuse, I was only using 50 watts! Imagine how many would have rung is I put all 1500 in? I got the LOOK

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Hmmm! Was the person in Nicargua talking on the telephone wire or ham radio.

I'm inactive right now but someday soon.

p.s., look up K04A in your area. He has a 5'er and is very active. Tell him I said HI. He lives somewhere off of 222 just inside Maryland.

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Wayne and Keon, you guys are bringing back too many fond memories, I loaded a barn roof back in the early 90's and worked 7 countries on 20 meters.

73

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16 hours ago, HayesFamily said:

No that was me that loaded up the wire. Will get in touch with him 

 

73 OM

I'm referring to HIS answering you. Did he pick up the telephone on the first ring? :-)

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As a funny, many years ago working military circuits we had what we called the Angry 9 (AN-GRA9). It was run either by engine mounted dynamotor or hand crank dynamotor.  For field use we used the hand crank.  There was a neon light on the radio that would glow when the radio was ready to operate.  On one exercise the operators tried and tried and tried to load that antenna watching for the glow of the light.  Didn't happen. So as one of them was lazily cranking the dynamotor at about 5 revs per minute, not enough supposedly to do anything, the operator started taping out a cuss word on the sending key and did it for many repeats. 

It was a few days later that the FCC tracked the users down and all heck was paid through the command.  Seems the neon light was burned out.

Like I said, 1 watt and a wet string can get you around the world if conditions are right.

Remind me some day sitting around the camp fire to tell you about evaluating single site DF equipment (back in the 70's) at Syracuse University Research Center. We used an ionosonde in determining the height of the ionosphere for calculations. Quite interesting watching the ionosphere change and definitely gave a different perspective on communications. 

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21 hours ago, Wayne77590 said:

I'm referring to HIS answering you. Did he pick up the telephone on the first ring? :-)

No but I'm sure my neighbors did. 

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On 11/3/2016 at 1:34 AM, HayesFamily said:

I didn't sign ... I feel bad now.  

de KE3HAY

So I have considered the Larson Through the Glass Mount but I was under the impression I was not able to mount that to the windshield. I know that the windshield is it 2 pane laminate but is that the same as double?

***

WB3DJU is a dear friend of mine who is a member of FMCA. He has agreed to take a look at the cap to see what the best option would be but after hearing everyone's comments I think I am going to try the through the window mount if it can be mounted to the windshield.  

I'm late to this party and you may already have done something, but the Larsen thru-glass works find. I mounted mine on the highest glass window (single pane, light tint) to the driver-side side window. Tip of antenna is lower than my highest point on the coach. I hit repeaters at 10+ miles and the APRS side of my Yaesu FTM-350, on 10W, tracked me quite nicely from Texas to Arizona (Rawhide) and back.

73 de KA5GIL (aprs KA5GIL-9 and -7 --- the -9 is the RV)

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Actually I ended up veering away from the Through Glass Mount antenna simply because I could not get a decent standing wave ratio at all. The best I was able to get was 1.8:1 up in the 155 megahertz range

Instead I came up with and idea of a ground plane and bought this contraption made by train. It has for radios that I'm able to bend down under a quarter wave antenna and my standing wave ratio is 1.1 :1 smack in the middle of the 2 meter portion.

I was also able to mount an hf mount down below the antenna and with grounding wire to the chassis I'm able to get all of my HF bands in the phone portion bellow 3:1.   40 and 75 meter is very narrow and those bands I'm only 1.5:1 in the important segments where I have Nets. The entire bandwidth on 40 I'm under 3 and 80 meters I am under three from 3898 up to about 3950. Not to shabby. 

20 15 and 10 I am 1.5 ish across the entire band. 

0118171639.jpg

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Here is a thought on routing your cable. Look at going down the refrigerator vent. You could cut all the sealant off the place where the TV antenna enters the coach. The hole may be big enough to run your other cable down the same path.

Bill 

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