Field Testing the Antenna Called “Long Tall Sally”: Oops and Downs!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about a new vertical antenna concept that I dubbed “Long Tall Sally”. To recap; I wanted a field portable antenna that occupies a very small footprint. The trade-off of a reduced footprint is an increase in height. This involved stretching a quarter-wave vertical for 20m into a tall, skinny antenna that is still resonant on 20m. Yesterday, I took Long Tall Sally into the field for a POTA activation and she got the job done – but with a couple of caveats!

I chose Ontario’s MacGregor Point Provincial Park (VE-0281) for the activation. This park sits on the shoreline of mighty Lake Huron and is one of the few Ontario Parks properties that remains open all year round – even in the depths of winter. Lake Huron stretches for more than a hundred miles, all the way to the state of Michigan on the US side. That’s a lot of open water on which strong winds can develop. And such was the case as I set up my station, outdoors, on an otherwise very mild February day.

If you ever visit MacGregor Point Provincial Park be sure to take some sunflower seeds with you. One of the most popular trails in the park is the Huron Fringe Trail near the Visitor’s Center. There are a lot of tiny Chickadee birds along this trail that are accustomed to human visitors and readily take seed directly from your hand.

The antenna was mounted on a 29ft telescoping fiberglass pole (an amalgam of a damaged MFJ 33ft pole and a Cabelas Classic Crappie pole). Even though the thinnest sections at the top of the pole had been removed, the wind was whipping the tip from side to side quite violently. The antenna wire is from BNTECHGO purchased from Amazon. It is described as “Ultra Flexible Silicone Tinned Copper Wire”. Sometimes manufacturers’ claims play fast and loose with the facts, but not in this case. BNTECHGO’s ultra-flexible wire is exactly what the manufacturer claims – I highly recommend it. The wire is available from 12AWG down to 30AWG; I chose 20AWG.

Everyone knows it’s windy

Well, ultra-flexible wire is very easy to handle – especially for portable operations like POTA/SOTA. Unfortunately it is also very easy for the wind to handle. The strong wind streaming off big Lake Huron grabbed my wire and knitted it into the brush near the top of the small trees beside my operating position. The slick silicone insulation on the wire aided and abetted the wayward wind to remove the wire from its fastening at the top of pole. Within seconds all 25 feet of my radiating element was detached from its moorings and set adrift in the tree.

… the wild west wind had other plans

Fortunately, as a pick-up truck owner, I keep a short pole with a hook on the end for removing items from the depths of the truck bed. I used this pole to grab the lowest part of the wire and thanks to the slick insulation I was able to retrieve the wire from its arboreal captivity fairly easily. But that was not the end of my trials and tribulations. The pole was mounted on a hefty steel tripod that provided adequate support in backyard tests. But the wild west wind had other plans and soon after getting the antenna re-erected, with a new more secure knot at the top, the pole tipped over – fortunately without further damage.

The Sun it is setting in the west

Radio fun time was beginning to run short. The Sun was getting lower in the sky and thoughts of giving up for the day danced through my head. But, just in time, I remembered the lyrics of a hymn I had learned in childhood: “He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster” and with renewed vigor I forged on. Always carry a backup, and a backup for the backup. In the deepest reaches of the truck bed was a box with a hitch mount support for my pole. No wind on Earth (at least not in my part of the Earth) was about to flip over a Ram 1500 truck. So, after a whole lot of frustration and exhausting effort, I was able to power up the radio and get on the air. It was a learning experience!

Previous backyard tests of “Long Tall Sally” had been performed with a prototype mash-up of scraps of junk wire held up on my pole. It tuned, fine business, with my homebrew L-match and I was able to make a couple of contacts. Encouraged, I built a permanent version and that is what I was testing out in the field this time.

So how did it perform?

I spotted myself at pota.app and called CQ. I thought I had my Yaesu FT-891 set for 20 watts CW but I had inadvertently left the power down at 5 watts. No problem with QRP though – “only use as much power as is necessary to make the contact” is good advice. The first response came immediately after that first CQ; it was W0MM in Texas who gave me a 529 report. Several stations came back to me from states like Nevada, Oregon, Arkansas and Utah with unusually low RST reports (I was unaware that I was only transmitting at 5 watts at the time). EA2BD in Pamplona Spain gave me a DX QSO for the log. After only 18 minutes the callers dried up and I called QRT with just 18 QSOs in the log. But, the objective for the day was to find out whether “Long Tall Sally” could earn a place in my POTA antenna bag – well, she did the job and earned her place. But …

I think it took me about twice as long to set up and tear down my antenna as I spent actually on the air. I am going to inwardly digest what I learned on that activation and improve on that. Rapid deployment is very important for POTA’s Rover awards and other activities like RaDAR (Rapid Deployment Amateur Radio). The principal problems encountered on this exercise were all related to the height of the antenna. Hmmm …

Now what if it were possible …

… to maintain the small footprint on the ground while simultaneously reducing the height of the antenna. Could it be done? That’s a project I am working on now. I have some ideas that I think are going to work. Stay tuned.

Footnote: Ontario Parks staff frequently and regularly patrol parks in their familar white pick-up trucks with the Ontario Parks logo on the doors. Their job is to ensure visitors are obeying all the park rules and regulations. One of their trucks drove slowly past me while my pole was still erected. “Uh-oh, is this going to be a problem?” I thought. But no, the warden gave me a friendly wave and a smile, which I happily returned.

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