Another week of amateur radio has expired. Expired Ham, get it? 🙂
Welcome to another issue of Expired Ham, a weekly newsletter where I discuss the ways I participated in the amateur radio hobby this week.
It’s been cold. Apart from last weekend’s CQWW DX contest participation, I’ve not done much of anything related to ham radio. If you recall, I’ve been contemplating ways to stay radio-active during these colder months. One way I found was to use a window jumper to bring the feed line into the house from my 49:1 transformer that I have hanging from my deck railing. This lets me operate from the comforts of the downstairs of my house by simply running a wire from the transformer up to the top of a collapsable fiberglass antenna mast. This has worked wonders for me so far, but I’m limited on power output since throwing more than 20-25W starts to cause all sorts of interference on devices inside the house. Since I live in a townhouse neighborhood, I can only imagine I’m also causing interference to my neighbors. As such, I keep my output at 20 watts and have done pretty well when hunting POTA activators and contest runners.
Another way I’ve decided I’ll stay active this Winter is by using my Buddipole with its 18′ mast held up in a drive-over flagpole mount that will, I’m hoping, allow me to put the Buddipole up and operate from the warmth of my car with the added benefit of not having to use any guying to keep the antenna from flopping around.
The other option I’ve only just recently started to consider is buying an ATAS-120A screwdriver antenna to allow me to more quickly operate from my vehicle on HF using my FT-891. The FT-891 is a mobile radio in form factor and while it makes a great portable radio, it’s designed for installation into a vehicle and the ATAS antennas are designed to be mated to the FT-891 (and other Yaesu radios) natively, allowing for super simple HF mobile operating.
I used to have my Yaesu FT-8900 installed in a a Jeep Wrangler that I had back when I first got my ham license. It was super-duper simple to install a radio in that vehicle and there were vehicle-specific antenna mounting options available that made placing a VHF/UHF whip onto the spare tire mount. That worked great. However, I’ve long since gotten rid of that vehicle and now drive a sedan. The best antenna mounting option I’ve found so far is a lip mount, like the Diamond K400S (13.5′ feed line), Diamond K400C (6.5′ feed line), or Comet HD-5M. This would allow me to very easily mount the ATAS antenna on my trunk lid and run the feed line into the cabin to the back of the FT-891. The problem to solve then would be to find a way to mount the FT-891 that didn’t involve drilling holes or otherwise causing permanent damage to any of the components of the car’s interior. Perhaps there is a cup holder mount that will accept the FT-891 detachable face. If you know of such a solution, please leave me a comment and let me know about it.
Anyway, we’ll see what Santa brings me this year. I don’t think I’m on the naughty list so maybe he’ll send me all the stuff I need to run an HF rig from my car.
73 all,
Matthew, K2MAS
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