I bought a 2 meter rig in 1974, and took it to college. It was a Regency 
HR212, and ran an unheard of 20 watts.

For a brief time, I had a homemade collinear. It was one of those made from 
pieces of rg59 coax cut to a certain length, and then soldered together with 
the shield of one piece connected to the center of the one below it, thus 
alternating back and forth to the end of the antenna.

Anyway, this thing was 35 feet long, and when the wind was not blowing, had 
a heck of a lot of gain.

I hung it from a 9th floor window, and it hung down to the 6th floor. I 
lived on the fifth floor, so the feedline wasn't very long. The building 
blocked it to the south, thus causing it to act like a very good beam 
pointed north.

I would consistently pin S meters 60 miles away on 52 simplex until the wind 
broke the thing into several pieces.

I never took the time to build another one, mainly because I had used up my 
free supply of scrap coax on the first one.

But, it was great fun while it lasted.

I replaced it with a vertical dipole made from an old tv antenna element. 
Whenever I wanted to work 2 meters, I would push the dipole out of the 
window fastened to the end of an old broom handle. I had sawed off the 
business end of the broom, and fastened a metal bracket that I scrounged 
from somewhere to that end.

The antenna was held in place by closing the window down onto the bracket, 
and by a rope which was tied to the bracket and then around the leg of a 
table where the student refrigerator sat.

It didn't work as well as the 35 foot long monster, but, it gave me good 
area simplex coverage during the year prior to the installation of the 
area's first repeater.



Mike Duke, K5XU
American Council of Blind Radio Amateurs