J pole antenna

[brat]

Just started meeting with a local group here on setting up a comm plan using multiple members to relay traffic via simplex and avoiding repeater use, since they could be out of service or compromised. The members now cover some 150 miles or so and the test comms have worked out better than expected with exception to some, who like me, only have handhelds.

During one of the meetings, several members mentioned this local company's product for improving comms for us who use dual band handhelds and don't have or want to invest in a base or mobile radio. I am one of those types cause I just want to communicate and don't need another hobby to spend money on.

So, according to all those "superhams/elmers" at the meeting (who have like a million years combined experience), this is what several recommended for those types like me to invest in to substantially improve our capabilities with our handhelds for very little money. Yeah I know about and have the plans for building wire and other antennas and plenty of good guys to assist, but you know, I'm lazy sometimes and if someone else has done the research and offers an alternative for "just a little more", then I'm gonna take that route and spend my time doing something else.

I'm just passing this on in case any of you are like me and just want to improve your range for not much money. Don't ask me about all the jargon cause I don't know, but show your "elmer" the specs and see what they say. I'm trusting these guys/gals if shtf, so I'm trusting them to point me to the right antenna, cause if shtf, it's also in their interest that I be able to talk to them too, right ?

http://www.b-squareengineering.com/jpole.htm

[APX808]

Ohh yeah man, I had read about those and planned to buy one from ebay but never did, mainly because imports are blocked in my country now
If you get one it would be awesome if you could post some pictures and your experience with it.

[JohnyMac]

Wow brat! I think you found what I have been looking for.

I wonder how tall the pole it is affixed to has to be? I wonder if you could operate it off the peak of your roof to get optimal range?

If I did install it on the peak of my roof I would have to figure out a way to ground it in case of a lightening strike. Obviously you would NOT want it connected to your radio during a thunder storm.

PLEASE brat, if you get one let us know how it works out. 

[Kbop]

If I did install it on the peak of my roof I would have to figure out a way to ground it in case of a lightening strike. Obviously you would NOT want it connected to your radio during a thunder storm.

I have used Polyphaser on my discones with good success.  I typically put a lightning rod near by.  I've never seen an arrester that will work with a direct hit - I think the goal there is to not burn the building down in a direct hit.

[JohnyMac]

Yes Kbop, I do not want to burn the cabin down 

We do not have lightening on our cabin. Have thought about it but just don't have the cash right now.

[JohnyMac]

I had some free time today and ran across this Youtube video on building your own J pole antenna with copper piping. Take a peak and let me know what you think.

2m Copper J Pole antenna

Here is a link to the design.

As a sidebar and a  alert:

Show content

Every time today I tried to watch this YT video it crashed along with others on this subject. No other video's just this one subject.

[Kbop]

I wonder if it was a hic-up - it played for me without a hitch.

[Shadow]

Just started meeting with a local group here on setting up a comm plan using multiple members to relay traffic via simplex and avoiding repeater use, since they could be out of service or compromised. The members now cover some 150 miles or so and the test comms have worked out better than expected with exception to some, who like me, only have handhelds.

The question is - how would a group expect to communicate over an area 150 miles with UHF or VHF communications?  How could you expect to communicate with those people if all you have is a handheld?

During one of the meetings, several members mentioned this local company's product for improving comms for us who use dual band handhelds and don't have or want to invest in a base or mobile radio. I am one of those types cause I just want to communicate and don't need another hobby to spend money on.
How do you expect to learn anything or do anything if you aren't willing to put anything into your communications bag except a handheld radio?


http://www.b-squareengineering.com/jpole.htm

After a shtf type event, there will be two kinds of people.
Those that are still alive and those that are dead.
Some of those that are alive are already dead, they just don't know it yet!
Like Schrodinger's cat - until you open the box, you won't quite know, but even if you do know, there isn't anything that you can do about it once the mistake has been made, it is real tough to remedy after the fact.

I would listen to those that have offered their advice and follow their advice.  After all, why spend thousands of dollars on food, a bug out location and supplies if once you get there, you are hurt and you discover that you cannot call for help and even if you could, maybe no one could hear you or get to you in time!

Take someones cell phone away from them for a week and see what kind of withdraws they go through.  You might be able to live without the internet or social media, but you probably won't be able to survive without some type of communications with the outside world.
JMHO

[Nemo]

Take someones cell phone away from them for a week and see what kind of withdraws they go through.  You might be able to live without the internet or social media, but you probably won't be able to survive without some type of communications with the outside world.
JMHO

I get in trouble with my wife all the time over that.  If it were possible I would nail my *^^&%()*&$^#$# phone to the wall and never put it my pocket again.  I would love to have one of those boxes with the handle thing you held to your ear and spoke in the other end with the long curlieque cord on it that went riiinnggg rinnggggg rinnnggggg until you answered it or the person pushing the buttons on the other end hung it back up.  The best thing about that was it would stop after 5 or 6 and was screwed to the wall with a wire on it.  It could not really be moved more than a few feet.

This in your pocket wireless chit is dreadful.

Nemo

[Shadow]

There is some preppers out there that are so paranoid that they believe that if someone can hear their conversations on a radio that they could be found.
They have done exactly what you just described.
Run a wire from each building on the property to the main house and use Field Telephones to communicate locally.

I myself just cut the cord - Verizon - two months ago.
Well, actually I didn't cut the cord, I just switched to Verizon Wireless Home Phone.
The WHP works on the principal that a box communicates with the cell tower and connects directly to your home phone.
If you want to go someplace and you want to take your phone with you, you just unplug it from the electric and its battery power will go about 2 hours stand alone.

I was paying $32 a month for a Copper - wired home phone with no long distance and no long distance plan.. The long distance plans were in the neighborhood of about $25.00 a month extra.

With the WHP - the whole bill is only $25.00 a month and that includes unlimited long distance, caller id etc...

My gripe is that our world has progressed from telephones to text messages.
If you show a child a ham radio, their reply is - why would I want to do something like that.
The only thing I have to show them is that I can send text messages via digital modes, or I can send text messages via CW - even when there is no cell towers.
With a really good antenna, on a really good day, I can even get basic internet service - Winlink via HF..

The people that just uses the chicken band - 2 meters / 70 Cm FM are really cutting themselves short.   And, if they rely on the repeaters to make their comms work, they will be sadly disappointed when they discover that the repeater operates on the same principal as the cell tower and that when the repeater has no electric or runs out of fuel, it doesn't work any better than the cell tower....

When I hear aged, decrepit old hams trying to work digital modes via a 2 meter FM repeater, and they don't know what they are doing and they won't listen to my advice - how to do it, I just laugh and walk away.

When you try to work digital modes with a FM repeater, you defeat the real purpose of the digital mode in the first place.  The purpose of the digital mode is to be able to operate in adverse conditions, at or near the signal noise floor, and be able to be copied by everyone in the state or location.  That is something that you can't do with one repeater...

Telephones are a necessary evil.

The Sheeple with the cell phones will be the first one's jumping off the roof when the cell phone quits working.

The laughable part is that the ARRL suggests that we share our power with the cell phone people and allow them to use our batteries or our generator to charge their cell phone batteries.
My opinion is - if I am prepared and you are not - then you deserve to drown.

Those very same people that laughs at us hams and preppers are the very same people that would love the benefits of what we do and what we have.   But they are the ones that would never spend their own money on a portable emergency battery power source or a generator - because when the sun is shining and there is unlimited power from the electric company, then they don't need any type of preps.  When TSHTF they are the first to scream help me, help me!
Then they believe that their government is going to come to rescue them....

How many people refused to leave their house during Katrina and were stranded, and someone had to risk their lives to come and rescue them!

[Nemo]

I wonder if it was a hic-up - it played for me without a hitch.

Not a hiccup.  It was a glitch.  Ask nobama about those.

Nemo

Telephones are a necessary evil.

So evil and so not quite so necessary.  Give me a pigeon and the telegraph office downtown.    

But still nail it to the wall.

Nemo

The Sheeple with the cell phones will be the first one's jumping off the roof when the cell phone quits working.

Could we arrange that in the next few months?  Something that lasts a couple days or week or so?  Get a good crop of them culled?  I would help dig holes.  I have a little backhoe with a bucket on the other other end.

Might save a crapton of future headaches.

Nemo

[Shadow]

Nemo,
If history teaches us anything, in a calamity or disaster, the cell phone towers are shut down to keep the terrorists from using them to activate their bombs - like what happened at the Boston Marathon a few years ago.

Or what happened in Washington D.C. and Virginia after the earthquake shut down the Nuc power plant and everyone ran outside and tried to talk on their cell phones.
Meanwhile the amateur radio repeaters sat there virtually silent.

This leads me to believe that the Preppers really don't have it all together and the average Prepper wants to use their handhelds like a cell phone - as an alternate - after TSHTF.

There has been minor attacks - stolen copper at cell tower sites and the backbone cut - JCB'd by terrorists and unknowledgeable backhoe operators.

With the loss of ATT Long Lines, the fear now is that other countries can jam or destroy the satellites used to carry phone traffic.

When TSHTF - I will already be long gone, loaded up and on the road to higher ground!

[Nemo]

Get ready for another thing to happen.  The Brits are warning of this one.

Nemo

http://unchainedpreppers.com/forum/general-discussion/something-new-to-worry-about/msg61548/#msg61548

[Shadow]

Actually that is wrong Nemo...

I don't want to say anything that would make it sound like I was rubbing someones nose in it, but who ever wrote that article doesn't know what they are talking about.

A Solar Flare - Carrington Effect - you would see it - just a couple of minutes after it happened, since anything that happens on the Sun appears in the speed of light, light taking just a couple of minutes to travel from the sun to the earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

As far as the debris goes, anything ejected usually takes 2 to 3 days, depending upon how fast the solar wind blows and brings it!

What you don't realize is that these types of solar storms happens about once every 150 years and that we are over due to have another one.

We have had terrible Geomagnetic storms all this summer, and last year there was an event that if it would have struck the earth, would have probably shut down civilization for a year or two at the least because the power generation and sub stations would have failed and there is no replacement parts on hand to repair / replace what would have broke.

For a city dweller, this means people stuck in elevators, no electric to run anything - water works, sanitary sewage, air conditioning, gas pumps, banking.
No one would be able to access their money, no one would be able to go to work, even if you went to work, there probably wouldn't be any work - because there wouldn't be any telephones or internet to do anything.  The grocery stores wouldn't be able to sell the food they have, because they wouldn't know what price to charge, and there wouldn't be any computer to take inventory or order more food and there wouldn't be any computer to take their order or deliver what the store needed.

The people in the country has it a little better.
They can kill animals for food.  Grow a garden, fish, and can drink from springs and bathe in creeks and ponds.

Once the looting and shooting starts, it is every man for himself!
Someone without these basic skills will be S.O.L.!

[Nemo]

I defer to your expertise.  Because you obviously know a crapton more about this than I.  No sarcasm there, you really do know a crapton more about it than I.

Call me Fox-- I report you decide.  Saw the article figured I should bring it for attention here.

No

[pkveazey]

Todays facination with the J pole antenna is beyond words. I became a Ham in 1973 and have built every kind of home brew antenna you can think of. The J pole is awful because 9 out of 10 are not constructed correctly. When properly done, its not half bad. Just build yourself a 1/4 wave ground plane with 45 degree drooping radials and you'll kick all those J poler's butts. All you need is a 3/8" X 25 thread antenna mount for about $7 (at your local Truck Stop) as a platform and you're off to the races. For 2 meters, use a 19" vertical rod and 3 or 4, 19" radials. Bend the radials down at a 45 degree angle to make the antenna be 52 ohms.

[JohnyMac]

Right on pkveazey! I made a home brew 1/4 ground wave antenna using a chassis 239 connector a 3/4"x10' PVC pipe, 50' length of coax with male PL 259 connectors on end and 5 ~19" lengths of 12 gauge solid wire.

At first I wasn't impressed then when I bent the radial down 45 degrees the antenna came to life.

Here is a YT video that will do a better job explaining what to do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkmD3Sgz7Q0