My second, more temporary "flagpole antenna" is nowhere near as elaborate as my first project joining an Icom AH-4 autotuner, PVC and wire.
This time I used a 21-foot push-up Wonder Pole (the "Advertiser"). In the pictures above you see the pole being used as intended: as a temporary mast for a flag on July 4th. In the picture below it is purely an antenna...or as the neighbors may think, "just a naked flagpole".
I ran 23.5 feet of insulated 10 gauge wire up the pole, 23 feet being the minimum for 80 through 6 meter operation using the Icom AH-4 autotuner. I clamped the wire to one of the flag clips at the top and telescoped the pole back up.
For now I've shelved my ambitions of running the wire up the inside of the pole in a 100% stealth configuration, since it would be a pain to expand and contract the pole if I did that, and besides since this pole is shorter than the wire this way it's easier to do some helical winding along the lower section there.
The wire wraps helically around the pole until it reaches the lanai, above which it just hangs like a (dark) flag lanyard and does not look at all unusual from front yard or from the street, which are on the other side of this wall.
Any counterpoise attached to an AH-4 must be at least 5% longer than the antenna wire, to tell the AH-4 which way to "push". This counterpoise runs from the AH-4 ground terminal along two sides of this courtyard. For cabling I used irrigation control wires and direct burial coax, and took advantage of some excavation and a new driveway to run them underground through buried irrigation sleeves.
How the antenna perform? Adequate but not as well as my other "flagpole" antenna, which benefitted from metal roof tiles below the counterpoise. Attaching the counterpoise lead to a ground rod and then running many radials would undoubtably help my signal at this new QTH.
At a length of 23.5 feet the wire performs best on 10 through 30 meters of course, and I got from here in Northern California to Hawaii on 20 with the first shout during a recent SSB contest so I am getting out moderately well, and certainly this antenna is more than enough for worldwide PSK31 QSOs.
The AH-4 tunes up 1:1 on 80, 40, 20, 30 and 15 meters, and 1.25 or 1.5:1 on 17, 12 and 10 where it's closer to resonance at various fractions of those wavelengths. The internal antenna trimmer in my Icom 746PRO also works on 30 through 10, but tuning with the AH-4 right at the base of the antenna is undoubtedly more efficient. I use a horizontal loop for 6 meters so haven't tested the vertical there.
More testing (playing) to come. Meanwhile, if you'd like to see my informal S-unit comparisons between my first and bigger "flagpole" and my old GAP Titan vertical, please see the Flagpole Antenna 1 link below.
Other pages:
Antenna Farm 1 • Flagpole Antenna 1
Antenna Farm 2: The Flat Roof Challenge
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