Category Archives: Gear

J-Pole Antenna

Gear, Uncategorized

On Tuesday, I received the 2M J-pole antenna that I ordered from jpole-antenna.com.

Maybe I’m used to receiving over-packed items from Amazon, but the packaging on this one looked a little… sparse.  With some instructions that were apparently not followed:

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Which resulted in a box looking like this:
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And even worse, an antenna looking like this:
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Fortunately, it was no big deal. The soldered connections looked good, and I was able to bend it back into shape:

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If the connections had been damaged, I would have been upset. I opted to buy the antenna, instead of making one myself, just to get up and running a little quicker. I’ll hopefully give it a trial run this weekend. I would only offer a friendly suggestion, to KB9VBR, that he package his antennas to survive a harsher transit experience. Never underestimate what the UPS / FedEx / USPS folks can do. 🙂

Expensive Friday

Gear, KI4EYN

I found myself in Huntsville this past Friday, so I stopped by the Gigaparts store.  I’ve been wanting to add my Yaesu 2M (FT-8900) radio to my home setup, and didn’t want to wire the radio directly to my Radio Shack 25amp power supply.  So I picked up a RigRunner 4005H Complete Powerpole assembly.

I also bought a portable 6-Meter J-Pole antenna from KC0ZEO, to put into my go-bag that I keep in my truck:

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Looks to be a nice little assembly.  This will give me an excuse to break out my 6M HT and use it.  I’ll let you know how it tests out.

I also ordered a J-Pole antenna, from KB9VBR, to mount in my attic.

Now I just need to start putting everything together.  Easier said than done.  🙂