Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Campfire Ham Radio on the HF Bands

So I've been thinking about a regular (monthly? Weekly? Daily?) blab session on the bands for Campfire amateur radio operators.

There are a few problems to solve there, but one of them is which band we should choose. There are a lot of them: 160m, 80m, 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 12m, 10m, 6m, 2m, 125cm, 70cm, 23cm, 13cm, and beyond that the ranges get so short that the rule is mostly just "Don't interfere with anybody else."

For a Campfire ragchew, though, we'd need a wavelength long enough to give us hundreds or thousands of miles of range; I imagine for practical purposes that's probably 20m or longer.

However, antennas get bigger and more unwieldy as the wavelength gets longer, and we need a wavelength that's short enough so that normal everyday Campfire hams are likely to have antennas that can operate there. Given the trouble I've had putting up an 80m antenna in town, I'm guessing that's probably about 40m max.

30m is A) a WARC band that not many people will have antennas cut for, B) restricted to digital-only data, and C) only 50kHz wide; so...probably not 30m.

40m is better than 20m for range, but 20m is better than 40m for manageable antennas.

There's also the possibility of using one of the Internet-dependent modes, which is cheating, but would give worldwide range with a UHF handi-talkie and a hotspot (or repeater). Given the new prevalence of things like Zoom, which are available to everyone whether they have licenses or not, it's hard for me to see the benefit of those modes for something like this.

So, here are the questions:

If there was a regular Campfire ragchew available, would you be inclined to participate on 20m? Would you be inclined to participate on 40m?

Thanks...

Either, prefer 40m.

No ham here, but my youngest has a tech license. And is gonna get a general or better ticket soon.

I've told him I'd finance some equipment

Just curious what a 40M antenna entails?
Tower? Wire from house to garage?
Can you cheat on length with a coil?

Those are more complex questions than perhaps you intended.

A monoband 40-meter dipole will be roughly 70ft long, and you'll need to run a coaxial or ladder-line feedline to the center of it, where there will probably be a transformer of some kind. A monoband end-fed half-wave antenna for 40m will also be about 70ft long, but you'll feed it from one end, using another transformer. A 40m vertical will be about 35 feet long, but it will also need a counterpoise system of ground-level radials too. Yes, you can cheat the length with a loading coil or a capacitive hat, but you'll pay for that somewhere--usually in radiated power.

In my small backyard, I have a multiband off-center-fed dipole (OCFD). I climbed up a tree in the backyard as far as I could (about twenty feet) and installed a pulley; I ran paracord through it. I used the pulley to raise the antenna's balun into the air. The long arm of the antenna I stretched diagonally across the backyard and used a piece of paracord to tie its insulator to the top of the six-foot stockade fence. The short arm I stretched in the opposite direction, coming somewhat more sharply down to the top of the stockade fence. Technically, it's an inverted-V off-center-ved dipole. It allows me to operate--without an antenna tuner--on 40m, 30m, 20m, 17m, 15m, 10m, and 6m. I use fifty feet of LMR-400 coaxial feedline from the balun to the corner of the roof of the house, and along the roof to the outside of the radio-shack (attic) window, where it's screwed into a pass-through that fits under the window like a tiny air conditioner. I have another LMR-400 cable connecting the inside of the pass-through to my antenna patch bay; a short LMR-400 patch cable from bottom row to top row; and then a final piece of LMR-400 from the back of the patch bay to the radio.

I also have an end-fed multiband antenna that goes down to 80m and up to 10m, giving me all the standard and WARC bands except 60m. Its balun is hung from the outside of the radio-shack window, and the wire runs through trees down one side of my property, across the back, and up the other side, where it's finally tied off--you guessed it--to the top of the stockade fence.

A multiband antenna is much less money and hassle than a farm of monoband antennas, but it doesn't receive or radiate as well. If your son is interested in ragchewing and experimenting, he won't care; if he's interested in contesting, he'll want a set of monoband antennas.

Best advice I got from our Elmers was "For every dollar you spend on your station put 75 Cents toward the antenna system". If you do a search for a Ham club in your area and email them saying you need antenna advice/help for your young son people will help. An antenna analyzer costs a few hundred dollars someone in the club will have one.

A wire dipole with the center as high as possible is a good way to start but there are several variable to get the exact right length for the bands he wants to work. Height, reflectivity of the ground below, structures near by. You can get close just looking the length up but 5 minutes testing after it's in the air can make a big difference.

You mentioned tower.... being able to put a directional beam up of some sort is a game changer. A local club might help you find used gear for pennies on the dollar. The used market is flooded with great quality gear because software defined radio changed every thing. Hams that spent a fortune on flagship analog radios are upset because they can't get close to what they paid for them now.

This is the radio that crashed the market for analog radios they cost about 900.00







Hams love to help kids. I've spoken with several people that had career opportunities they never would have found without networking coming from other Hams.

Good on you for helping your son out.

Again you did mention tower, so... the Hex Beam design has been a game changer too. They weigh almost nothing and don't have to be very high to preform well. An inexpensive TV type rotor will turn them. Some people are able to just put a mast up on their roof (Lots of wives don't allow this approach though).

Here is some info



Most don't do 40 Meters though. The ones that do are huge and offer no gain on 40 though. I have an aluminum L channel support coming off my tower that I use as a center support for a 160 meter antenna. The trees on our property are too close together and Winter winds shredded our wire antennas. Now the wire is in clear air and has survive 3 Winters. A 40 M 80 M fan dipole off the side of a tower would really offer you son the chance to enjoy the hobby.

Makes no difference to me. Can't do 160, don't have a wire up for that.