This morning I met Bob W2IK up on the north side of San Antonio at a county park named Bullis Park. This is near Blanco Rd & Borgfield Road, on the back side of Camp Bullis (way outside Loop 1604). The purpose of this meet was to test some of Bob’s new antenna deployment ideas in preparation for the CQ VHF Contest next weekend. He had just received a new aluminum flag pole that would extend from 6′ to 25′ tall in 5 sections.
Bob rigged a mount in the bed of his truck, using an old heavy-duty umbrella stand (emphasis on the “heavy” part of that description) that he had rescued a couple of years ago at a yard sale or side of the road (I forget which), strapped the mounting pipe to that stand, inserted the flag pole, attached the yagi 2 meter beam antenna and coax, then raised it up to the full height. The pole itself only weighs about 10 pounds. He bought it on eBay for about $80 including shipping.
He powered up his rig on battery power and started calling CQ, CQ on 144.200, but at 10am on a Sunday morning, there weren’t all that many folks running SSB on 2 meters. He contacted one ham up in Boerne, TX, but that wasn’t more than 20 miles from his setup location at the park.
Here are some photos….
