TechTips are occasional brief posts describing easy ways to do difficult things.
Picture this scenario: a portable operator is setting up an antenna in a park on a nice sunny day in summer. The antenna requires one or more raised counterpoise wires. After raising the antenna, he walks to the far end of the counterpoise wire and plants a trekking pole into the nice, soft ground then attaches the wire to the top of the pole. Easy!
Now, let’s change the scenario. It is now winter, the ground is frozen hard and there are several inches of snow lying on top of a compressed layer of ice beneath the snow. The trekking pole easily penetrates the soft snow but cannot support the weight of the wire and falls down burying itself in the snow. Not so easy.
Let’s stay with summer and move the scene to a nice sandy beach on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. The sand is soft but attempting to penetrate it more than two or three inches is futile. Beneath the sand is a solid layer of rock. This scene is common in my home area where the ancient rock of the Niagara Escarpment reaches up into the 100 km long Bruce Peninsula dividing the main body of Lake Huron from Georgian Bay.
Or we could be setting up a portable station on the exposed bedrock of the Canadian Shield at Torrance Barrens, Ontario. These are all situations I have personally encountered in the area where I live and operate.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. I can’t claim to be the inventor of the technique I am going to describe but I have used it on multiple occasions while setting up my portable station in the diverse environment found in this part of Ontario.
Ontario Factoids: Ontario is big. According to Duck.ai, the driving distance from the Quebec border in the east to the Manitoba border in the west is "approximately" 3142.44 km. Most people are unaware that while Ontario is a very long way from the Atlantic Ocean, it does have a sea coast on James Bay and Hudson Bay in the near Arctic. If you were able to drive from the province's southernmost mainland city of Windsor to Moosonee near the southern end of James Bay the journey would be "approximately" 1413.2 km. By the way, Canada's southernmost point is Middle Island in Lake Erie, Ontario which is further south than the California border with Oregon. Middle Island is further south than about 30% of the lower 48 states of the US.
String theory has the solution
Take three fiberglass poles, or bamboo canes, or grab hardwood sticks lying on the ground and bind them together tightly a few inches from the top using thin bungee cord. The poles can be easily spaced out to form a tripod as can be seen in the picture below. The bungee cord will keep the poles together, but it will stretch sufficiently to allow the poles to form the tripod. Now the wire can be draped over the top of the tripod and attached to a counter weight to hold it place. For a counter weight you can use a water bottle or a bag of sand or snow.
NB: Only very wise men (and most women) can see the snow in the picture below.
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An excellent idea John, thank you.
Worth every dime, thy tip-jar runneth over!
73 de Stan
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Thanks Stan, and enjoy your spring/summer seasons.
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Hello John,
Your email is impossible to read. The text extends infinitely to the right side of the page.
73,
Guy VA7GI
>
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Thanks for the report Guy. If you let me know which email reader you are using I can try to diagnose the problem. Meanwhile you should be able to read any post at hamradiooutsidethebox.ca.
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Hi John,
I am using Mac Mail. BTW, the current email message reads fine. I can also easily view your website.
BTW, do you read the SARC Communicator newsletter from Surrey, BC? It has worldwide distribution. It is free – just sign up. See https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uIo8lskW4QrGXEE0pxmVMDXoO96GOkkx/view
Read the FreeDV RADE article. This may revolutionize ham radio, replacing SSB! [I mostly operate CW.]
73,
Guy VA7GI
>
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Sorry Guy; your reply got stuck in my spam folder and I just read it today. I don’t know what happened with that unformatted email. Similar things happen to me sometimes with groups.io messages. I use Thunderbird on Linux and Android. And yes, I am very familiar with the SARC Communicator; I have been one of their regular columnists for quite some time now. It’s the best ham newsletter I have ever read. I admire the huge amount of work the editor John Schouten VE7TI puts into each issue.
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Hi John, Just an FYI. Your TechTip#4 was practically unreadable due to formatting issues. I finally got it to format by copying and pasting it into NotePad. Good idea on the makeshift tripod. I’ll have to try it out sometime. DanNM3A@mail.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2026 at 2:00 AM
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Dan, what email reader were you using? This is the second report of this issue I have received.
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@media only screen and (max-width: 800px){table.body .container{width: 100% !important;}td>h1.email-title{font-size: 28px !important;}.footer-content .footer-content-section,.footer-content .footer-content-section p{font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width: 620px){body,table.body{background-color: #fff !important;}table.body .content{padding: 0 !important; margin: 0 !important;}table.body .container{padding: 0 !important; width: 100% !important; margin-top: 0 !important; margin-bottom: 5px !important;}table.body .main{border-left-width: 0 !important; border-radius: 0 !important; border-right-width: 0 !important;}table.body p,table.body ul,table.body li{font-size: 18px !important;}table.body ul{margin-left: 32px !important;}table.body .btn{float: none !important; width: 100% !important;}table.body .btn table{width: 100% !important;}table.body .btn a{background: #f9f9f9 !important; font-size: 18px !important;}table.body .btn-primary a{background: #3858e9 !important;}.btn-bar-wrapper{text-align: center;}.btn-bar-wrapper td{width: 100% !important; display: inline-block !important;}.btn-wrapper,.btn-wrapper table.btn-anchor-wrapper{width: 100% !important;}.btn-anchor-wrapper a{display: block !important; margin-bottom: 12px !important;}.btn-wrapper.btn-secondary .btn-anchor-wrapper a{background-color: #f6f7f7 !important;}.info-tip td,.info-tip img{vertical-align: top !important;}.missed-content-container ul li{font-size: 14px !important; line-height: 1.8 !important;}}@media only screen and (min-width: 621px){body{margin: 0;}.header{margin-bottom: 48px !important;}.content{margin: 0 40px !important; padding: 40px 0px 39px !important;}.wrapper{padding: 40px 56px !important;}h1{font-size: 40px !important;}.header-right{font-size: 16px !important;}.footer-section{padding: 0 56px !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width: 640px){.container{padding-top: 8px !important;}.wrapper{padding: 8px !important;}} .apple-mail a { color: inherit !important; font-family: inherit !important; font-size: inherit !important; font-weight: inherit !important; line-height: inherit !important; text-decoration: none !important; } I was reading it in my mail.com (an aol entity) on a web browser. I usually can read everything just fine in the email, so I almost never go to your blog site. That might have been a good way to go. Dan NM3A Sent using the mobile mail app
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