Went to the Mobile (Alabama) Swapfest today… first time to another club’s Hamfest. Nan went with me and got to meet a lot of people she doesn’t know, and she wasn’t impressed with how small the swapfest was. I told her the big ones like Dayton, Orlando, and Huntsville are a lot bigger. The purpose of my wanting to go was to improve my mobile antenna situation so the title is a play on the word “mobile”… Meaning Mobile, Alabama and my mobile antenna situation. Those who know me know that I’ve pretty much used mag-mount antenna’s since I got my amateur license. So far I’ve gotten pretty good results with Mag-mounted antennas… even though I’ve gotten good results, they aren’t the best choice in the antenna arsenal. First, they aren’t very good on paint and finish on cars. Second, they don’t give the BEST signal. The most important thing I want to say is they are NOT safe… this is why I want to get away from them.<\/p>\n
There has been many a time that my mag-mounted hamsticks have fallen over. The first time was when I first got my first few antennas from my friend Mac. After I put a 40 meter hamstick on the roof, I got the SUV up to the 50mph range and the airflow over the car knocked the antenna over and the tip dragged on the road until I got the car stopped… ever since then I’ve guyed my hamsticks when using a mag-mount. We drove all 10,300 miles on the great trip to Alaska last year with a guyed hamstick on the back. Since I’ve been back though, with a guyed hamstick up there , I’ve had it tip sideways and forward when the SUV pulls into the driveway at home too fast, or if it hits a tree branch just right… Those two reasons alone weren’t enough to make me want to stop using mag-mounts… the biggest concern I have that IF you get in a car accident, they EASILY dislodge and and could injure someone. Safety is the primary reason I wanted to switch… So what did I do? Read on.<\/p>\n
I bought a 5\/8 – 5\/8 wave, gain antenna for the 2 meter\/70 cm side of the radio and a lip mounted NMO mount to attach it to the SUV. I also bought a 56 inch tapered stainless antenna whip… For now I’ve turned the old mag mount I used for my old 2 meter quarter wave into a 6 meter quarter wave antenna. This magnet is smaller and lighter and doesn’t tip. When I can get a good mount for it I’ll have the 6 meter antenna mounted on the other side of the rear hatch lip. In the meantime, the 6 meter antenna gives me low SWR across the entire band from 50MHz up to 54MHz.<\/p>\n
I’m still tinkering with the hamstick situation… I got a better look at one of my friends antenna mount on his minivan. He has a mount in the roof rack, I need to see how he’s grounded… I mounted an antenna mount on my roof rack yesterday and I put the 40 meter hamstick up there today. I talked to a station in Chicago, IL and got a 5\/5 but he said my signal was bad; so it’s time to bond the antenna mount to the SUV. I took the antenna down because I didn’t like the way it arced in the wind… I don’t want to damage the roof rack, my plan is to guy it tomorrow and see how things work out. I don’t necessarily like how tall it is on the road… it’s close to 13 feet 6 inches tall mounted with an antenna on it, I will run with it until I find something better to mount, or a better way to mount the hamsticks a little lower.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Went to the Mobile (Alabama) Swapfest today… first time to another club’s Hamfest. Nan went with me and got to meet a lot of people she doesn’t know, and she wasn’t impressed with how small the swapfest was. I told her the big ones like Dayton, Orlando, and Huntsville are a lot bigger. The purpose … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-radio"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tom-nan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}