Portable 20M Antenna

[druid]

I'm looking ahead to the summer, where I go camping/fishing in mountain lakes at 4000 ft. What antenna should I put up for 20M?

I think the simplest (and only one I could carry when I'm on my motorbike) would be a wire dipole - just put a rope on the center insulator, throw it over a tree branch and make an inverted V.

But my new vertical has gotten me into verticals. I could make a 20M vertical (5M) with sections of aluminum pipe and support it with the tent-trailer, but I'm not keen on setting up piles of radials and the ground where I'll be camping is pretty dry.

One other option is the ham-stick vertical dipole (two hamsticks end-to-end, mounted vertically) - put it on top of the tent-trailer. It wouldn't need radials, but I hear the ham-stick dipoles aren't very efficient (I read somewhere 1% of a "real" dipole).

Thoughts?

druid
VA7LAS

[5B4AJB]

Verticals are nice for the cities where we don't have much space, mountain tops allow us full-sized dipoles and other large antennas, taking that one step further wire beams provide the ultimate choice for portability and gain (and price!).

Provided you don't need to rotate the mountain too often, this might be a good choice. It looks like the author has put many hours of research into this website...

[G6NHU]

A useful hint when slapping up dipoles for portable use is to tie the end of the dipole to some rope, paracord, whatever (via an insulator) which is roughly the same length or longer than the dipole legs and use those to extend the legs out. That way you still have an inverted V but it's not quite so pronounced and you don't have the radiating ends right on the ground. I bought some really brightly coloured paracord for just that reason.

[TI2-NA7U]

Druid,

I have an Elecraft KX1 that I often take on trips. It has a built-in ATU and has 40, 20, and 30 meters supported. I have two 33' roles of speaker wire (one wire split into two). I use a slingshot to put up a fishing line as high as I can get it in any convenient tree. The other wire lays in a straight line along the ground. The ATU easily tunes this on every band and the antenna works great (especially if you are on the shore of a large body of salt water!). This antenna requires no feed line and is the easiest thing in the world to raise.

Another option is an antenna I used to use for 20 and 40 meters. You take some twinlead, such as 300 ohm TV twinlead, 66' long. Split it down to the 33' mark. Those two halves are your dipole legs and the remainder is both a feedline and also antenna on 40 meters. Really easy to pack!

[AJ4GY]

Just make a 20m Wire Dipole. Should work great.