N3HAL and I finally got down to the Outer Beach at Smiths Point yesterday. N3HAL recently picked up his outer beach permit and we drove out around 2 miles to play HF radio for a bit. The temp was about 50f but unfortunately there was a strong cold wind off the ocean.
Smiths Point is a county park about 60 miles east of New York City on the south shore of Long Island. Smiths Point outer beach is a small part of Fire Island chain of beaches. Sections of Fire Island are part of the Fire Island National Seashore and I have activated the FINS several times in the past for the Parks on the Air program.
Over the winter I put a drive over stand together and modified a slinky for use as a vertical antenna. Don’t ask why… It’s just another one of my crazy antenna experiments. The drive over stand is nothing more than 2 feet of board with an attached pipe fitting. An 18 inch section of steel pipe screws into the pipe fitting, The setup provides a solid base for deploying portable antennas and makes transporting it a breeze.
To extend the slinky I use a collapsible 20ft fiberglass Shakespeare fishing pole. Connecting the slinky at the top of the pole is done by using using an small lanyard clip attached just behind the end clip of the slinky and the eyelet in the top section of the pole. The base of the slinky is connected to a wing nut on the top of the 9 to 1 UNUN with an eye connector that is soldered to the end of the slinky.
Extending most of the pole without the top section easily gets the slinky is fully extended. The base of the UNUN also has a wingnut for connecting the counterpoise. I used 33 feet of wire for the counterpoise and had no issues tuning up the old TS50 with it’s matching AT50. Most likely better counterpoise lengths could be worked out for different bands.
After setup we both worked several stations on 20 meter phone during the Florida QSO party. At around 100 watts the slinky vertical got us 55 and 57 reports from various stations in Florida.
On the next go around the weather will be warmer and I’ll try to use the analyzer and fiddle around with the counterpoise lengths.
Hey, in any event I am pleased with the initial results of my off the wall Slinky Vertical!
73 de KE2Yk
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