Yoyo antenna

Started by KK0G, April 28, 2013, 11:02:01 PM

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KK0G

I was surfing the web trying to find a better way to store and deploy my EFHW for use on the trail when I saw the Yoyo antenna http://www.hamradiofun.com/yo-yo-tenna.htm which is $26 with shipping for a single yoyo.

Of course me being the eternal frugal homebrewer, I did a little more surfing to see if I could find the parts to make it myself and what do you know.......... I found these http://www.ebay.com/itm/120931636307?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649 which only cost me $12 for a pair of 'yoyo's'.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

cockpitbob

And free shipping.  Great find.  I just gave you an "applaud" point for that!  I love wire antennas, except for the part about them always getting tangled.

KK0G

I can't fault them for buying cheap laundry reels, removing the cord and installing $2 worth of wire then marketing it as a yoyo antenna to hams for 4 times the price............... that's good old American capitalism. Of course the beauty of capitalism is I'm also free to reverse engineer it and source my own parts elsewhere.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Joe

What about using a chalk reel. I have the whole home brew bug right know. I was cleaning up my shed and came across one that has a broken door, so it won't hold chalk. And after reading your thread the light bulb went off. Don't know if would work or not, I think I can put about 50' of wire in it if not more, it holds 100' of string.

73 Joe

cockpitbob

Chalk reel is a great idea.  And the price seems right.

KK0G

Quote from: Joe on April 30, 2013, 11:01:28 PM
What about using a chalk reel. I have the whole home brew bug right know. I was cleaning up my shed and came across one that has a broken door, so it won't hold chalk. And after reading your thread the light bulb went off. Don't know if would work or not, I think I can put about 50' of wire in it if not more, it holds 100' of string.

73 Joe

I never thought of that, great idea. Harbor Freight would be a good place to get a couple chalk lines, they have regular sales and I seem to recall seeing them priced at around $2-3.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

KK0G

The reels showed up in the mail today. For wire I'm using 24 ga. 2 conductor speaker wire that I split apart, the 35' counterpoise fits easily but the antenna wire at 63' is a pretty tight fit although I did get it all on there. The reels are much less robust than what I had hoped for, the two half shells lock together with a 1/4 turn setup, for extra security I taped the halves together to help prevent them from unlocking.

That said it seems to be a pretty decent set up for quick and easy deployment and stowing. I took them out into the front yard and tossed the antenna into the tree, dropped the counterpoise on the ground, hooked them to my SOTA tuner and had it tuned on 20 meters in just a few minutes. Then I unreeled them to full length and tuned it to 40 meters, then reeled everything back in. The whole process probably took less than 5 minutes.

It remains to be seen how they'll hold up under field conditions but if they fail completely in the field I still have the wire itself and I'm only out a few dollars.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

KK0G

Quote from: RodneyHaines on June 05, 2013, 08:12:20 AM
Referencing KK0G:

I guess I favor good ol' fashion capitalism.  After all, you didn't provide the entire parts/price list of your project (including gas to Radio Shack), so the comment about four times the cost was way out of line. (Plus people always forget about small business overhead - taxes, phone charges, office supplies, copies, etc.)

Do a Google search on my callsign plus the word capitalism and you'll likely find many threads from multiple different forums showing me rabidly defending capitalism - there is no more staunch supporter of capitalism than myself. You seem to be confusing my freedom of choice as a consumer to mean I do not support capitalism which is ironic since the entire capitalist system is based completely on freedom of choice of consumers.

Quote from: RodneyHaines on June 05, 2013, 08:12:20 AM
Your first part was misleading; one of their single reel antennas is $19.95.  You decided to add the shipping to the total price, misleading the general public into thinking the product cost more than it really did.  Small family businesses cannot afford the "free shipping" of UPS warehoused merchandise; like Amazon does. 

And people always forget about TIME.  Time is worth something.  Some people have the time and talent to make/repair certain things while others do not.  That's why there are plumbers, carpenters and electricians.  Personally, I can do the electrician part; but call on plumbers and carpenters to do my homestead homebrewing.

So including the price of shipping is misleading the general public into thinking their product cost more than it did yet you want to include my time and gasoline into my product? You can't have it both ways.

Listen, I don't want to start a pissing match here, I really don't, but my feathers do get a little ruffled when someone insinuates that; 1. I don't support capitalism and 2. I'm misleading the public. I'm sure you're a nice guy and we probably just got off on the wrong foot so lets start over: Hi Rodney, welcome to the forum. 73 de KK0G
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

Rodney-Haines

#8
QuoteSo including the price of shipping is misleading the general public into thinking their product cost more than it did...

Shipping goes towards shipping, not the assembly of products.

Gas and time went into the production of your project.

I just thought it was grossly unfair and inaccurate to say this ham-owned business is selling stuff for "four times the price."  Not a very capitalistic or accurate thing to say, once the real numbers are crunched regarding his final production cost versus your final production cost....

I understand the owner of this company is a prepper, too.  So a double-whammy-backchat-slammy on the poor fella.

KC9TNH

Chris, I'll be interested to hear this antenna; it'll be nice after retirement to toss up the odd "prototype" at home to see if it'll play and have the time to make some skeds with some here. I know 40m on CW is seldom going to be a problem for us. If the dismal wx conditions ever get us to summer I've got a 72' end-fed I'm going to toss up in the backyard and test before putting it in the bag.

Good deal on the homebrewing; the understanding of it comes as a perk too. I made Craig's little gem quite awhile ago & it's one of the ziplocs that always goes along. And, as you say, if I lost the ziploc it could be made again from materials out of a strip-mall thrift store.

Happy trails & good luck! :D

KK0G

Quote from: KC9TNH on June 06, 2013, 05:56:03 AM
Chris, I'll be interested to hear this antenna; it'll be nice after retirement to toss up the odd "prototype" at home to see if it'll play and have the time to make some skeds with some here. I know 40m on CW is seldom going to be a problem for us. If the dismal wx conditions ever get us to summer I've got a 72' end-fed I'm going to toss up in the backyard and test before putting it in the bag.

Good deal on the homebrewing; the understanding of it comes as a perk too. I made Craig's little gem quite awhile ago & it's one of the ziplocs that always goes along. And, as you say, if I lost the ziploc it could be made again from materials out of a strip-mall thrift store.

Happy trails & good luck! :D

You already heard it Wes 8), I was using this antenna when we chatted during my backpack trip. We should do it again soon though, with our locations I'm sure propagation on 40 meters would be pretty consistent just like last time................. damn near repeater like LOL.

Cool link, I hadn't seen that one before. I incorporated the bullet connectors into mine also; quick and easy reconnect/disconnect, plus they're dirt cheap.
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin

KK0G

KC9TNH

Quote from: KK0G on June 06, 2013, 08:35:47 AMYou already heard it Wes 8), I was using this antenna when we chatted during my backpack trip. We should do it again soon though, with our locations I'm sure propagation on 40 meters would be pretty consistent just like last time................. damn near repeater like LOL.

Cool link, I hadn't seen that one before. I incorporated the bullet connectors into mine also; quick and easy reconnect/disconnect, plus they're dirt cheap.
Neat.  Yeah, you were eeeeeeeeeeee-z copy. Our distance is like a low-power 1st hop. One of the joys I have sometimes when just firing up the 817 in the shack. Its filter is so nice it actually brings weak signals forward, vs. the digital treatment in my 450D which tends to attenuate as part of the narrowing - throwing baby out with bath water. Ray & Gil both swear the KX3 is even better. I'm probably going to get one as I have some bucket list money squirreled away, and the much-babied 817ND is going up on the block (with its filter & Nifty book) and there are likely a couple of safe-queen bang-sticks that can go too. (A guy can only hump so much ammo.)
;D

Rodney-Haines

I use this version from DWM Comm:



It makes a fantastic portable, almost curtain-like array.  I use different diameters of PVC pipe to telescope about 17 feet into the air and have three hook-eyes on each side to tie off the reels.  I extend each reel to 32.5 feet and feed into my Heathkit HW-101.  The HW-101 will allow loading w/o a tuner.  The tubes and metal chassis also warrant some protection against EMP. (Even though I still keep the rig in a home-made Faraday cage when not in use.)

73, RH

Lamewolf

I found my "YO YO" reels at Walmart in the camping section sold as camping clothes lines for about 4 bucks each !  Mine holds 87' of #24 insulated wire each now, one is an endfed wire and the other is used as a counterpoise.