As a teenager in Omaha, my ham shack was in my room in the
basement. I had a Drake TR4 and a TH3 junior 3 element tri bander
on an 8 foot tripod on the roof. The beam was at about 28 feet.
My 80 and 40 meter dipoles hung off center of that tri pod, with
one end hanging in a tree in the front yard that I often climbed
trying to get it as high as possible, and the other end to a
telephone pole my uncle bought, it was about 30 feet, and
installed at the opposite end of the property. This was back in
the day you could by used telephone poles for 5 or 10 dollars. A
few years ago, my mother in law passed away, and my wife
inherited part of their farm which was sold to a local farmer.
So, this was when I bought some bigger antennas. I had a couple
of ideas of buying telephone poles that were 60 to 65 feet above
the ground to install either 4 verticals, or flat topped dipoles
between them in two directions in order to phase. I spent days
hunting for telephone poles. I'm getting side tracked from my
story. Anyhow, the utility company, who is in charge of replacing
telephone poles, sells them to the highest bidder and gave me a
phone number of the guy who purchased the most surplus. I called
him. He had a crane outfit. He said all the poles the utility
and phone company sold him were 30 to 35 feet due to cars and
truck crashing into them and sheering them off at the base, or
just the utility company sawing them off at the base. I told him
I need 60 feet above ground minimum. He said the longest he
could get was 50 footers and that was before they were installed.
You put a good 10 percent below ground I was told based upon only
light weight wires and cables being hung from them so triple that
for big, or heavier, stuff. I asked him if he could, or if
anybody could, buy telephone poles out right from the utility
company or from any place around Denver. He said the utility
company refused to sell them direct, or new, so I scratched that
idea. I was bumbed because I new a guy in the south on 80 meters
who had a pair of 120 foot telephone poles installed by his
utility company and he had 80 meter loops on them that were
phased and a friend in South Dakota learned his power company
would install 80 foot telephone poles for 60 dollars with 20 foot
below ground. By the way, just for the fun of it, I asked this
crane operator how much, if I bought poles from him, he would
charge to install them. A thousand dollars for all four poles he
said. This was back in about 19 92 or so. However, back in my
teen days, as I started to say, I did something better. I had
maybe 50 feet of RG58 coax rolled up and laying on the floor.
Remember, this is in the basement. I wired a 100 watt light bulb
on to one end of the coax and a PL259 coax connector on to the
other end. I did not, I repeat, I did not unroll the coil of coax
before plugging the light bulb in. I was listening at about
midnight to a couple of my friends talking on the Nebraska side
band net frequency on 39 82 as I worked on my experimental
antenna. Once I was finished, I tuned the TR4 and since I was
using an external receiver to monitor my side band signal anyway,
I spoke into the microphone a couple of test transmissions right
on my friends frequency as they talked. A guy in Lincoln,
Nebraska, 65 miles west of Omaha where I was, immediately said,
"Whose that?" I said, "Bill? You mean you can hear me?" He said
yes but I was week. I made a few transmissions telling him what I
was using and then signed off to connect my main 80 meter inverted
vee so I could talk to them. I felt the light bulb, or what was
left of it. It was so hot, I couldn't hardly touch it. I'm lucky
I didn't burn the house down because while transmitting, I left
the bulb laying on the carpeted basement floor of my room. Cool
indoor antenna, though. Of course, I'm sterile now from all that
RF floating around the shack. I think I'll market this indoor antenna,
complete with connector, bulb, 50 feet of coax, and RF protection insurance
to cover any bodily physical loss.
Phil.
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