Found-materials antenna challenge

It might have been 2 weeks ago that I stopped in a wayside and saw a tangle of something orange-ish laying on the blacktop as I was leaving; naturally I stopped to pick it up just for the sake of keeping the area clean.

If I hadn’t thought of it myself, WisDOT provided a helpful reminder!

It proved to be two lengths of something like 24 gauge solid speaker wire. I untangled them, coiled them up and tossed them into the passenger’s footwell. You never know when you might need a bit of wire, right?

A couple of unfamiliar bits of connector, and some bare ends that look like they were pulled out of something. Looks like a smudge of smoke by the red bit. The color reminds me of thermocouple wire but it is plain ol’ copper.

Last week in a moment of whimsy it struck me that what I had found was a potential antenna!

Stretched out & weighted down on the deck for measuring: not quite 10 feet.

So I have 4 pieces of wire, each 9 1/2 feet long; 38 feet total. First things that come to mind are a 20 meter dipole, or a 38 foot EFHW, if I added other wire for a counterpoise. (hmmm, 38 feet, not the 43 I usually use; I should check the table of non-resonant-in-any-band lengths).

For now, it’s coiled back up and tossed in the radio pack for a future activation; watch for another post when I finish this sort-of-a-project. I think the Field Expedient Repair Bag contains everything else I might need.

Thank you for visiting driftlessqrp!


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