![]() Last year, my personal challenge was to validate all of my park and summit activations with 5 watts or less. A perfect antenna for our monthly “Team Baklava” activations. ![]() In the end, we both walked away with two effective military-grade field doublets. All of them gave us 599 reports! Vlado chasing a POTA activator.Īs I mentioned to Vlado, it might have been the first time I’ve ever used an HF “Handy Talky” with a doublet antenna! We then proceeded to work about three stations on the air in CW with 5 watts. I couldn’t put the antenna away without chasing some parks! Standing in the middle of my driveway, I asked Vlado to load the POTA.app website and look for CW spots. We checked all of the bands above 60M and the matches were even better. The KX2’s internal ATU churned for a couple of seconds and confirmed a 1.4:1 match. After confirming the frequency was clear, I pressed the ATU button. Vlado and I connected the doublet to the KX2 and tuned to 5,332 kHz. The big question for me was, “Will my Elecraft KX2 find impedance matches on 60M and above?” I had planned to hook up the doublets to my RigExpert antenna analyzer, then I realized it was essentially an unnecessary step. He wanted to keep the weight down so he could support the center of the doublet on his fiberglass masts. From WD8RIF’s website.Įric (WD8RIF), by the way, actually detached the twin lead from the fixture and posts on his unit and built a new center-insulator from a discarded 35mm film canister (see photo above). This isn’t a problem for me at all since I use super strong arborists throw lines to deploy my antennas. The negative, of course, is that the center insulator is relatively heavy. This is actually how this military fixture was designed to be used. Vlado and I both decided to use the winder as the center-insulator of the antenna. Many thanks to my daughter Geneva (K4TLI) for helping stretch, measure, and cut the antenna wire with us!Īssembling the antennas was incredibly simple as there are built-in binding posts attached to the twin lead on the winding fixture. We cut the legs to 31 feet, so there’d be a total of 62 feet of wire in each doublet. If it worked, great–if not, we’d cut them down to 22 feet and be happy with 40M and up. We decided to pick a longer non-resonant length and just give it a go. Thing is, I hadn’t done research into suggested leg lengths in advance. I decided (prior to cutting) that I wanted our doublets to go as low as 60 meters (5,332 kHz) and cover everything above. It was ideal for antennas and eyeing it, I thought there might be enough for two doublets.įor a Norcal-inspired doublet–which covers 40-10–we would need two 22′ legs. Guessing it might be 20 gauge and might even be teflon coated. This wire has a black jacket that’s quite slick. I did a little digging and found what I was looking for: some wire I purchased at a thrift store many years ago. ![]() While our wives were catching up, Vlado and I made our way to the storage shed and opened my antenna parts boxes. I was also thinking this antenna fixture would pair beautifully with Vlado’s Yugoslavian RUP-15/PD-8 manpack or even his IC-703 Plus. The temptation was strong to purchase a few more just for the 30 feet of 72-ohm military-surplus twinlead, however I understand that there’s a limited inventory and wanted others to be able to purchase this gem. I decided to buy two of them: one for me, and one for Vlado. Image of the MK-911 from Fair Radio’s product catalog. Turns out Eric (and a few readers) made me aware that it was available at Fair Radio Sales in Ohio for $10. ![]() I had assumed Eric found this as a one-off at a military surplus sale. Exhibit A: The stolen antenna.Įric’s doublet was build around a Hughes Aircraft MK-911 Dipole Fixture that was designed and manufactured for the US Military and appears to have been part of the PRC-74 manpack radio-set. I called it a “stolen” antenna because it had been on loan to me for so long, I think Eric forgot it even existed. If you recall, a couple months ago, I posted an activation report and video using my buddy Eric’s 40-10 meter doublet. Nonetheless, our 2022 goal is to do at least one activation per month as a team! MK-911 Thing is, both of us have pretty active family/work lives, so it’s challenging to make schedules work out. I’ve been trying to tempt Vlado to do more field activations–we’ve done a number together in the past and it has always been loads of fun. It’s been a while since our families got together, so it was fantastic to hang with them. This past weekend, my good friend Vlado (N3CZ) and his wife came over to the QTH for the afternoon.
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