Airborne Mobile

I am in the process of experimenting with different antennas for airborne mobile HF operations. I've taken my 2m HT airborne and it works great. I've talked over 100 miles with 1.5 watts at 8,000 feet. But, HF is my passion so I'm attempting to take my Yaesu 897, 12v battery, LGD auto tuner and either a hamstick or end feed zepp and go airborne. I've test flown the hamstick and the end feed zepp. They both survived but I could not get either one of them to tune. Try try again. This web page under construction....

Vans RV-4 Experimental aircraft with a 20m hamstick attached to the tail wheel assembly. In this configuration, from FL, I talked to K9UGD/M in his F-150 pickup truck in WI with a 5x9+10 report. It will tune on the ground with no problems. Note the tail wheel is about 2 feet off the ground in this photo because I was trying to see how the antenna would look while airborne. March 2006. Niceville, FL at Ruckel Airport (private airstrip -- 3000' long turf runway).

RV-4 N147CP flown by Ned Linch (N4LS)

Sleep at 10,000 feet. The air is nice and cool and the noise of the engine is the right sound to put this little girl to sleep just about every long flight. March 2006.

PAR Electronics End Feed 20m antenna attached to a 6M hamstick for support. The antenna would not tune on the ground or in the air. So, something must be up with something besides the antenna. Possibly the ground?

Beautiful shot of my RV-4 in April 2005 at the "Green Swamp". The swamp is a short private airstrip about 10 miles north of Lakeland, FL. I'm parked in Rob "Smokey" Ray's front yard which is where a group of us meet every year for the Sun N Fun airshow to talk stories of flying F-16s and such...

Airborne mobile in an F-111E. Rarely did I do this, but depending on my crew mate, I'd CQ on the way home from the Scotish bombing ranges. I received one QSL card via the bureau about 10 years later.

QSL card received from being airborne mobile in the F-111 (1988)

Airborne mobile on 2meters with an HT. It worked but very noisy. I had it hooked into my headset but my signal had a lot of background noise. Later, I used a small mobile whip with a mag mount. My signal was better. I'm only using 1.5 watts and this radio is over 20 years old -- Icom IC2AT.