Here's my hand-rotated antenna, attached to my "ham shack".
This is three sections of chain-link fence top rail, for 30' total. Each joint is secured to the next with a pair of self-drilling screws.
The base and the top mount are both eye bolts. They just happen to be the right size to smoothly slip over the swaged end of the lowest top-rail post. I used a metal chisel and a hand-sledge to open up the diameter of the other eye bolt until it snugly fit over the greater diameter of the top-rail. Very snugly — I had to persuade it with the hand-sledge to slide up about 8' to the mounting position.
It is easily pointed with a pipe wrench. I live 20 km from the only repeater in the area, so I only used the pipe-wrench for its initial positioning.
There's nothing else to point it at, except perhaps commercial traffic from logging trucks and service vehicles. There's a 37 megawatt hydropower facility 3km in the opposite direction — the discone can probably hear that. There's also a ferry terminal about 7km in that direction, in a hollow. The discone can't hear any published BC Ferries frequencies. I might turn it once, just to see if there's anything interesting to listen to, but if so, I'd probably add a dedicated V/U wideband log-periodic listening antenna, rather than turn it every time I want to listen.
Shown is a V/U three-element beam, with a discone on top. The wind loading is low enough that it's survived 60 mph gusts, without guys. I have a 4th section of top-rail, but would be nervous adding that without guys.
This is three sections of chain-link fence top rail, for 30' total. Each joint is secured to the next with a pair of self-drilling screws.
The base and the top mount are both eye bolts. They just happen to be the right size to smoothly slip over the swaged end of the lowest top-rail post. I used a metal chisel and a hand-sledge to open up the diameter of the other eye bolt until it snugly fit over the greater diameter of the top-rail. Very snugly — I had to persuade it with the hand-sledge to slide up about 8' to the mounting position.
It is easily pointed with a pipe wrench. I live 20 km from the only repeater in the area, so I only used the pipe-wrench for its initial positioning.
There's nothing else to point it at, except perhaps commercial traffic from logging trucks and service vehicles. There's a 37 megawatt hydropower facility 3km in the opposite direction — the discone can probably hear that. There's also a ferry terminal about 7km in that direction, in a hollow. The discone can't hear any published BC Ferries frequencies. I might turn it once, just to see if there's anything interesting to listen to, but if so, I'd probably add a dedicated V/U wideband log-periodic listening antenna, rather than turn it every time I want to listen.
Shown is a V/U three-element beam, with a discone on top. The wind loading is low enough that it's survived 60 mph gusts, without guys. I have a 4th section of top-rail, but would be nervous adding that without guys.
