VE6AB Portable Ops
Band Spanning The Globe
A smoky smart to the day finds me on the slopes of a high mountain meadow located in the Rockies.
This photo finds me working 40 meters with a Webster Band Spanner antenna.....1950's technology as that is how old this antenna is, an antenna that I recently acquired.
The WBS is actually a mobile antenna, however I have found that it works perfectly mounted on my manpack as seen here.
If you are not familiar with the Webster Band-spanner, it is a center loaded antenna with the loading coil wound directly on the fiberglass support column. A circular contactor attached to the lower end of whip establishes internal electrical contact with desired loading coil turn.
This continuous adjustment permits exact antenna resonance to be achieved anywhere within a given band, minimizing loading problems and band switching. The antenna is designed for 5 band operation, covering 75-40-20-15-10 meter bands (also MARS frequencies), with no external taps or projections. Band changes are simple, the whip is raised or lowered to a pre-calibrated setting corresponding to the selected band. This type of continuous adjustment permits exact antenna resonance to be achieved anywhere within a given band. The antenna is very well built, with the coil section epoxy sealed. The whip can be pushed down into the bottom column for clearance or storage if the antenna is not being used.
Read about my day here...
http://ve6ab.blogspot.ca/2017/07/webster-band-spanning-globe.html
