Hams in Important Places

A few months ago, K8RDN, KA8DDQ and I sat down with the architects for the new SEOC to talk about antennas.  For VHF/UHF antennas it is pretty simple; put up as tall a tower as we can manage and stick the antennas on that.

For HF it's a little messier.  We currently run CW and SSB stations simultaneously, and want to add a Pactor station.  Since we are interested in in-state, beams and huge height aren't useful -- we want wire antennas fairly close to the ground.

We decided on a loop (which has worked well for us) and two G5RVs.  Add to that the inverted Vee for MARS and you have quite a pile of towers.  We were sure to specify power and weatherproof boxes at the bases of the towers to support remote antenna tuners.

WB8RCR rendering

What we (I) didn't consider is that running the feedline from a tower at the end to the center of the G5 could get a little messy.  I thought of that later, but figured we could cobble something together.

When the drawings arrived from the architects, there was a 6 foot riser with a weatherhead specified at the center of each G5.  Obviously at least one of the architects was a ham.