A couple years ago now, our local craft person, Jonathon, W6BID put together a club build for a tripod for the Wolf River Coils SB1000. The WRC TIA (Take It Along) kit t is an excellent, economical, portable, base loaded, vertical for pretty much any band. The community around this antenna has spawned all manner of modifications, whip options, radial options, and in this case a DIY tripod. The “out of the box” tripod, while mostly adequate, was tippy in windy conditions. Several of us have also adopted either the MFJ-1979 or Chameleon SS-17 stainless steel whips for better performance on the lower bands. The problem being with the longer, larger whip, the base needs more stability. Enter W6BID…
For a club meet, W6BID organized kits for us to assemble in a weekend garage project. Each of us taking turns drilling holes, and assembling our new WRC tripods. The original kit consisted of a piece of plate steel, a 3/8″ thru-hole, stainless steel antenna mount, 6 L brackets that Jonathon had welded to the plate ahead of time, 3 sections of 1/2″ steel square tubing, and some bolts here and there. All that and a quick coat of spray paint resulted in one stout tripod base. It has served us well!
But some issues crept in over time and after multiple uses. For starters, this thing is chonky! And secondarily, since the plate is steel, oxidation formed in between the plate and the stainless steel antenna mount creating resistance with the radials. This was finally identified as to why SWR readings were so out of whack from when the last time it was used.
So back in the shop it went for an update.
To address the chonk, I drilled holes down each of the 3 legs at 3/4″ intervals, and then turned the leg 90 degrees, and repeated at offset 3/4″ intervals. The end caps which had fallen off long ago, were replaced, but this time filled with hot glue before being re-attached. The base metal plate also had large holes drilled where I could safely remove material. This reduced the weight considerably, but still providing a solid stable base for the antenna.
To solve the oxidation issue I used a product called DeoxIT L260Cp that is a lithium grease that is infused with copper particles. Once the steel surface was cleaned back down to bare metal, a dap was applied to the surface and everything reassembled. Other changes made along the way…
- Much experimentation with radials
- Out of the box are 3 33′ radials made of black silicone coated wire.
- Pro – Fairly quick to roll out.
- Con – Performance was “Ok”.
- Doubled to 6 33′ radials
- Pro – Increased performance significantly
- Con – When out in the field, you are taking up a circle nearly 70′ across. When camping this is valuable site space. The black wire was hard to see in the grass. Gopher/ground hogs actually tried to drag radials down one of their holes one night at a camp site.
- Swapped out wire radials for 33′ tape measures
- Pro – Fast to deploy. Easy to change the length if you want to “tune” the length for the band. Super fast to roll back up. Bright yellow tape is easy to see when deployed so people are less likely to walk through your radials.
- Con – They rust. They are heavy. They are bulky.
- Swapped out tape measures for 9 8′ radials constructed from a bright yellow silicone wire, and added quick disconnects.
- Pro – Very fast to deploy. Bright yellow for visibility when camping or portable. Shorter length is way way less prone to tangling. Very lightweight. Compact. Works just as well as the 6 33′ radials.
- Con – Not quite as efficient on 40 or 80 meters, but is still below 2:1.
Overall this has been a great project that has now gone through a couple iterations resulting in a very portable HF antenna solution that has performed exceptionally well. I just recently also picked up a padded tripod bag to store it in, and have a 50′ length of ABR Industies ABR240-UF (Ultra Flexible), with 5 ferrite beads shrink wrapped to the end. This entire solution can be in place in moments, is easy to tune, and with the larger SS17 whip is an efficient antenna system.
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