I am now the proud owner of a 8m collapsable carbon fiber roach fishing
pole.

I live on the 9th floor the (top floor) of an appartment block. I have
a hemi-eliptical balcony, about 3-4 meters across, I have a steel
balcony railing streching around enclosing it. There is a steel drain
dipe running through one corner of the balcony. I have unlimited
height (blue sky). I thought of lashing (or using sterling hose
clips) to secure the first section of the roach pole to the one corner
of the balcony, then I thought of using the top of the fishing rod to
suspend one end of a trapped dipole or G5RV(?) antenna, and fixing the
other via an insulator to an eye hook in the wall...

Only problem is the pole might be struggling to support the weight of
the trapped dipole.....(?)

With the above features, what would be the optimum 10, 20 and 40m
solution given the space I have, roach pole (supports limited weight),
drain pipe (good ground??), balcony etc...

Either commercial or homebrew, prefer home brew....

Tim

In article .com,
wrote:

Might I ask a favor? If you're going to post using an email address
which doesn't exist, could you please use one which *obviously*
doesn't exist (e.g. one ending in the .INVALID pseudo-domain, or in
EXAMPLE.COM)? It's a bit frustrating to write you a reply and then
have it immediately bounce back in my face :-(

I am now the proud owner of a 8m collapsable carbon fiber roach fishing
pole.

I live on the 9th floor the (top floor) of an appartment block. I have
a hemi-eliptical balcony, about 3-4 meters across, I have a steel
balcony railing streching around enclosing it. There is a steel drain
dipe running through one corner of the balcony. I have unlimited
height (blue sky). I thought of lashing (or using sterling hose
clips) to secure the first section of the roach pole to the one corner
of the balcony, then I thought of using the top of the fishing rod to
suspend one end of a trapped dipole or G5RV(?) antenna, and fixing the
other via an insulator to an eye hook in the wall...

Only problem is the pole might be struggling to support the weight of
the trapped dipole.....(?)

With the above features, what would be the optimum 10, 20 and 40m
solution given the space I have, roach pole (supports limited weight),
drain pipe (good ground??), balcony etc...

Hmmm. I can't say "optimum" but I think you'd be able to get some
very usable performance out of a system in which you use the balcony
railing as a support and ground/counterpoise, mount a support and
insulator of some sort at one end of the railing which holds the
fishing pole outwards at an angle of about 45 degrees, run a wire up
the pole as your radiating element, and use some sort of
tuner/matching system at the support/insulator point to tune the
system.

8 meters of wire as a radiator is more than you need for a
quarter-wave on 20 meters - you'd actually get a bit of gain out of
it. It's not quite 1/4 wave on 40 meters, but it's probably close
enough that a halfway decent tuner (or the addition of a small loading
coil) at the base could give you a good match on 40 meters as well.

Hooking up the railing to the drain pipe (if not already connected)
might increase the efficiency of the ground/counterpoise system.
However, it might also increase the risk of RF going where you don't
want it, and creating shock, burn, or TVI risks for other residents of
your building. There can also be problems where drainpipe segments
meet... if the junction is corroded or is just force-fitted together,
the metal-to-metal junction can act as a rectifier and create lots of
harmonics and other RF nasties.

Take a look at The St. Louis Vertical QRP antenna project:
http://www.amqrp.org/projects/stluis...20Project.html

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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