I am soon to take a foundation license and would like to work 2meters. I am
restricted by local regulations with regard to Antenna height. What would be
the minimum height that I could use ?
Any help advice appreciated
J.

Hi John

Thats a very open ended question!

You can use a 2M antenna half a metre off the ground. It wont however be
very effective in distance covered!

My view would be to mount an antenna at the maximum permissible height
and ensure that the coax run used was low enough loss. What I am getting
at here is dont run more than (say) 5 metres of RG58. Use something
lower loss like RG213. (I cant really be specific)

All this of course depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you
want to use only a few local repeaters it may be possible to get away
with a low mounted antenna. If however you want long distance simplex
contacts, height is important. If you want to input to FM satellites,
height isnt such a problem as antenna type is (it needs to radiate
upwards to some degree)

What are your interests and what type of antenna are you going to use?

Cheers Bob VK2YQA

John Hurkett wrote:
I am soon to take a foundation license and would like to work 2meters. I am
restricted by local regulations with regard to Antenna height. What would be
the minimum height that I could use ?
Any help advice appreciated
J.

John Hurkett wrote:
"What would be the minimum height that I could use?"

Distance to your radio horizon in miles equals the square root of twice
the antenna height in feet.

Suppose your antenna is up 50 feet. The square root of 100 is 10 miles.

Between two antennas at 50 feet each, the line of sight path length is
20 miles over smooth earth.

An antenna disguised as a flagpole can actually be a coaxial antenna.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

hello john,

good luck on your testing.

Take a look at this antenna,

http://www.cebik.com/hs.html

called the half square for two meters.

regards,
jj

John wrote:

I am soon to take a foundation license and would like to work 2meters. I am
restricted by local regulations with regard to Antenna height. What would be
the minimum height that I could use ?
Any help advice appreciated
J.