8/21-8/22 2021

This weekend I tried to activate on some land in Indiana that was at a relatively high elevation. I tried for a few hours on 2m and 70cm on 30W but made 0 contacts. I believe the issue is my antenna setup. I have a simple homemade speaker wire dipole. I think my issues are 2 things: 1. I couldn’t get the antenna high enough so it was only sitting around head level but in an open field, next time I’m bringing some paracord to hoist it into a tree; 2. My speaker wire dipole is extremely temperamental, I’d like to build something more a little more robust and not so fiddly. I recently watched HRCC & The Modern Rogue build a tape measure yagi and I think I’d like to tackle this as well. The PVC should make the elements less fiddly and prone to coming out of tune. I’m going to try and make a Yagi and a dipole from the tape measures. Now I just have to get to harbor freight before the rest of the Hams go and buy all their stock.