VE6AB Antenna Werks
Take-down Yagi Goes Fly-Fishing
Whats a photo of my fly-fishing chest-pack got to do with my Take-Down-Yagi you ask?
The biggest problem has always been to design and build an antenna that could be taken down and not only stored in my radio go-box, but also could be stored in my fly-fishing chest-pack.
Now you may ask as to why I needed a yagi that I could carry while fly-fishing a high mountain stream, and I will answer that now.
For example one of my favorite streams that I fly-fish is the Sheep river west of Turner Valley. The far reachs of the Sheep are located in a deep canyon located along the front ranges of the Rockies, and once you make your way down to the river located on the canyon floor, you can throw your cell-phone away as its useless with no signals available.
Now in the past I realized that the Kenwood TM-D710A mounted in my mobile and set up in crossband repeat would be perfect in case I got in to trouble while wading up or down stream several kilometers away from my mobile.
In theory this sounds good, but the problem was that an HT running 5 watts with a rubberduck antenna, or even a higher performance HT mounted antenna just couldn't make it in to my mobile reliably once I got some distance away from my mobile.
In the past, I had taken one of my portable yagis with me, and that was the answer as I could now easily communicate with my mobile, but the problem was the portability issue, as the yagi didn't takedown to a small enough package, and it proved to be annoying to carry while fly fishing.
Well my TDY is just what I needed, as it tucks away quite nicely in a pocket of my chest pack, and I can hardly wait for my first visit to the Sheep later this summer. Needless to say, my TDY along with my favorite HT will be in my chest-pack when I head out.
Click on the photo for a close look.....
Read my "End Of The Road" blog post here.....
http://ve6ab.blogspot.ca/2010/09/end-of-road.html
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