[Antennas] Kite as vertical

2002年8月22日 09:28:55 +0200

We used a kite antenna on an HF field day competition with great success.
One of our club members plays with kites and he made us a large box kite of
cheap and disposable construction. The kite was 2m tall and had enough lift
to allow the erection of a full size 160m ground plane vertical antenna.
We used small gauge stranded wire cut to a 1/4 wave on 160m and an earth
spike was driven into the ground and four radials attached to it. The kite
was attached to thin Dacron string and the antenna wire was attached to
the Dacron several metres below the kite.
The antenna wire was laid on the ground and the kite was sent aloft, while
someone ensured that the wire would not tangle. A small breeze had
sufficient power to quickly take the kite to the required height. When the
kite and antenna system stabilised, the dacron was tied to a separate stake
in the ground. The separate stake ensured that we could control the
vertical plane of the radiator.
We did not have a tuner available and the SWR was adjusted by snipping the
wire at the feedpoint at the earth spike. A near perfect SWR was achieved
without much trouble.
I live at the coast and the kite remained aloft and stable for the entire
afternoon. There is nothing magic about this setup and it was easy to
excecute.
We are planning another kite antenna this summer.
Deon ZR1DQ
.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Wilson <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 11:55 PM
Subject: [Antennas] Kite as vertical
| I have a friend who is very keen on flying kites of various types. He's
| suggesting using a more-or-less stationary kite as a vertical antenna.
| Anyone have useful links and/or experience doing this? We would expect to
| operate it at somewhere in the 100'-200' range.
|| I'm having some trouble visualizing the bottom end of the setup. Assuming
| the residual wire is on a spool, how does one connect to the airborne
part?
|| Tuner: I'm assuming that the best approach will be to feed it as an
end-feed
| wire, since a decent ground is not going to be a possibility. The recent
| postings on the FUCHS antenna were interesting. Anyone have a schematic
etc
| on the parallel-tuned link-feed tuner that goes along with that?
|| Thanks for any info,
|| 73 de ian K3IMW/6