We install a wire antenna to a tree up the hill

We estimate it's about 130'
This is one of the lengths to avoid per the University of Delaware Engineering Dept

The 14 gauge wire is nearly invisible.
Note the no-so-invisible ATT "tree" cell tower just below the arrow.
No complaints, we get perfect 5G reception!

Tryout with a Xiegu G-90 Radio and laptop for ham digital communications.

 

Here's our friend Dan KA7GPP
He has volunteered to come up and hook up his nifty hi-tech VNA (Vector Network Analyzer) and analyze the antenna and check the performance.
These VNA instruments used to be the size of a suitcase and cost thousands of dollars.

VNA screen shown graphing the test results of our antenna. (not all that great)
 Vector network analyzers accurately measure the incident, reflected, and transmitted energy, e.g., the energy that is launched onto a transmission line, reflected back down the transmission line toward the source (due to impedance mismatch) and successfully transmitted to the terminating device (such as the antenna).
 

Here's a matrix of the antenna performance.
I drew this as we checked the ham bands with his battery powered KX3 Radio.
A 1:1 SWR is perfect, higher numbers need to have an antenna tuner.

The radio has an internal antenna tuner so it easily matched itself to the antenna despite the not-so-great peaks and dips in our graph.
 

Here's the connection plate with power and antenna connections
Black plate in the background is a CO/LPG monitor/alarm.
We used stained/natural 1/4" plywood for the walls.

Shot of the initial wiring of the cabin west wall.
Coax cable from the roof and 12Volt power for the radio hookup.
Note the odd spacing of the 2x6s in the wall.
 This was due to we used repurposed concrete forms from the new ATT cell tower up behind us.

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10/22/23