The short vertical antenna comprises a manually adjustable tuning coil, a capacity hat of four wires to increase the effective antenna height and a vertical radiator working against a ground plane of radial wires placed on the ground.
The commercial NDB antenna model AC-24B made by Spillsbury and Tindall, a now defunct Canadian manufacturer, was selected due to availability. Though it was made for transmission, we are using it here for receiving. It needed to blend into the area, so the "rocket" was repainted in less attractive colours :-).
The hole was dug in a week-end, the tower base was poured two weeks later in the rains brought to us by Hurricane Katrina and finally the tower erected some late night after work. We finished putting it up in darkness after spending time on hands and knees looking for dropped bolts and nuts.
Then the antenna was hoisted in place, the capacity hat installed and some ground radials laid, just in time to avoid the first snow in late October 2005. Now I have all winter to do some DX-ing on the 200 - 450 KHz band tuning in NDBs from the eastern North America zone.
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