160 Meter POTA setup
When I want to activate on 160 meters the only additional thing I have to do is attach my 160 meter loading coil to my 35 foot vertical wire I use when activating on other bands. Here is a photo of my 160 meter loading coil on my Spiderbeam mast. One thing about this coil is that its somewhat heavy and pulls on the mast quite a bit. More so than what I am comfortable with. So I added a couple of velcro straps to the bottom to help support it.
One thing that is very important on 160 meters is having a good ground for the antenna to work against. Its no where near good, but connecting the shield of the coax to the body of the Jeep seems to work OK for me.
Here is a photo of the Spiderbeam mast with the 160 Meter loading coil attached. As you can see, even with the velcro straps supporting the coil there is still some bending of the mast.
So how does this tune up on 160 meters? The photo below shows my NanoVNA. Resonance is at 1798 kHz. Just barely below the lower band limit of 160 meters. This should load up fine – but will it radiate?
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