Hi to all.

If one has the space, I've had pretty good luck with the J pole.  Of
course, that does require a tall attic (mine is tall).  The antenna I am
using at present is a pretty laughable setup, but it works.

I have an old AEA Hot Rod half wave 2 meter antenna mounted on an RF
Products magnetic mount which is sitting in the middle of a pizza pan.

The antenna has the drawback that it is limited to 25 watts--it would melt
with one of the 50 watt mobiles.  Fortunately, mine is of the 25 watt
variety, and that seems to be plenty for the Rochester, NY area.  I can
work repeaters that are as much as 40 to 50 miles out of town with this
setup.  The beautiful thing about this arrangement is that the half wave
antenna is actually not ground dependent--the pizza pan just serves to keep
the antenna upright, though I'm sure that a metal counterpoise under the
antenna doesn't hurt anything!

Regard9ing Mike's comments, I have also found a refrigerator top to be a
good ground plane, if one has a fairly high ceiling.  When I was in
college, my dorm refrigerator was used as the ground plane for a quarter
wave mag mount antenna with satisfactory results, although I suspect that
being five stories in the air on a fairly good sized hill didn't hurt either!

73, de Lou K2LKK



Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
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