Alot of these pages are






The Box-Delta Kite at 200 feet


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The latest project is kite aerials. Having spoken to Jon (G2FHF) who fly’s kites quite often, mainly for top band operations, I have decided to give it ago myself.

First place (as usual) is a troll of the internet for information. The main problem for kite antennas appears to be the static build up. With this in mind I tried a auto-transformer (that is just a coil of wire) which one side is grounded and the other is attached to the wire. Tuning is achieved by tapping on to the coil from the radio to have a feed impedance of 50 ohms. First try was a complete disaster and thus returned home for a rethink.

Out for the second time with greater sucess. I stayed on 3.5 MHz band to avoid the DXWW Contest and to try to find two of my amateur friends. Richard M5RIC was on the Isle Of Man for the contest (MD5K) and Bob M3DPQ who would be assisting with GB200CLB.





EQUIPMENT

ATU Static Discharge 1st Method Static Discharge 2nd Method
Securing Stake System Box Delta


The Results

The results from using the kite have been interesting. Activates were limited mainly 3.5MHz with some on 7MHz. This was done deliberately to limit the radiation to something of which could be assessed. Using the signal reports from around the country, these were plotted on a map and the contours plotted. Assessment of these contours has shown the approximation of the radiation pattern. It appears to have very good signal reports up to 300 miles up country then nothing pass that. The line is approximately Carlisle to South Shields (the A69?) with S5 reports then nothing from Scotland, Erie and very few contacts from the Continent even tough my counterpoise was pointing south for the majority of the time.
No DX was chased, as this would cloud the judgment. The next few trips if the weather allows will be for other bands and these will be assessed in a similar manor.
If you have any comments please send them in via e-mail.

73 all de Mark.

LINKS

Jim Hartley Kites
Scats Country Stores