I spent a good chunk of this weekend putzing around working on this project. I had to run to the metro for aluminum, I had to setup the new vertical mill to use the aluminum, I needed a small project box for the balun, etc.

I started out with fabricating a new base. It has 6 conduit hangers on the bottom, an insulated 3/8" mount, and some bolts with wing nuts for the radials.

Bottom of the base showing the conduit hangers and the insulated 3/8" mount

The base and conduit (support) deployed in the driveway for testing

Closeup showing the base+radials+loading coil+bottom of the mast

I am currently using a Wolf Creek Coil (I plan to make my own once my lathe shows up later this summer) so I pulled out the antenna analyzer to document the tap point for each of the bands.

The whole system is pretty small as the longest pieces are five feet long and they could be shortened a bit if needed. The whole system takes about 10 minutes to setup and provides coverage 80m-->10m.

I am pretty happy with the overall design. This is much nicer than the prior version that I had been playing with this week and meets some additional requirements that I came up with as I thought through my various use cases. The family and I will be camping in south-eastern Minnesota later this week so I intend to try out the new antenna from the campsite prior to taking it to Montana for Field Day weekend.

My main antenna for Field Day will be a linked dipole (designed for 17m, 20m, 30m, 40m) for the high bands. This vertical will primarily be used for 80m and potentially 40m. I will also have a random wire antenna with as my backup.

I could see brining this antenna on future trips because it is small, covers all of the bands that I plan to operate, and is extremely quick+easy to setup, and does not require some sort of sky hook.

73 de NG0R