5/8 Silver Rod Installation

Hi,

Well its got to the point where I need to create a mounting bracket and decide on a mounting point for the Silver Rod.

It's raining again here, but I've established where it's going...




The Broom shows where along the shed that the mounting bracket/point will be, with the antenna mounted at about 2 metres AGL on the side of the shed, running the 15 metres of Mini-8 coax to it will be interesting.

Anyway, ordered a T&K Bracket, and will have to buy some angle iron and steel plate for the inside of the shed wall, otherwise the stresses on the shed will likely tear the antenna from the side wall

So the top of the Silver Rod should be at about 26ft AGL...

'er indoors got her Quartz Kitchen Counter Tops, so I've earned enough brownie points to erect the CB Antenna, ha.

Is there not more support at the corner or in the middle where the batten is.
Looks like my new shack ant that is where the strength is in mine.

Alan Pilot wrote:

Is there not more support at the corner or in the middle where the batten is.
Looks like my new shack ant that is where the strength is in mine.

Hi Alan,

Unfortunately my existing tower is not too far away, so the distance is to avoid antennas hitting each other in high winds, you're right the corners would be better, but I need to also be 2 metres from the boundary fence, so as ever, antenna installation is a compromise.

Hence reinforcing the structure with boards and steel plate inside the shed, to enable a 12" T&K, which in turn will need a couple of pieces of vertical angle iron on which to drill holes for the Silver Rod Mount Bracket, must admit this is an odd bracket, but then its my first CB Antenna, so all a new experience to me, and I'm learning something.

Anyway, I've been investing time in my other activity, Shooting, I've been buying stuff, and need to clean a rifle tonight for a trip to the range tomorrow afternoon, as my kitchen is still being built.  some storage of pine furniture prevented me from getting into my shed anyway, so all I've managed to do is drill a hole for coax, but the furniture was taken this afternoon, so later this week I can finish making up coax for the tower and finally have this ready for final antenna tuning.

So started gathering parts for the CB Antenna, although coax will wait for groundworks which will put coax underground, yup I know, but 'er indoors doesn't want to see wires everywhere.

Ok, Galvanised T&K arrived, ordered four Galvanised Angle Brackets, then it'll be galvanised/stainless steel plate I need to measure, then stainless steel bolts/nuts/washers, then minor fabrication.

Can't wait!!!

dig a 4foot deep and about a foot square hole buy a six foot scaffy pole knock it down to a foot sticking out of the ground and get some bags of postcreat fill the hole up two about 8 inches buy a scaffy joiner knights sell and put you 20ft scaffy pole and antenna in the scaffy joiner and tighten the 4 bolts and then you will have a better base then your shed sides

Problem with that is I already have a V-2000 at about 30ft on top of a 20ft Lattice Tower, and I need separation, plus 'er indoors wants a nice natural stone patio throughout at £24 a slab, so I'm limited and compromised to the shed side, and even that required negotiation with the boss.

I agree that what you suggest would be very nice, but it's just not possible here.

I will be putting up a Butternut HF-9V down the garden, with a web of 20 ground planes reaching out to 10 metres just below 'er indoors turf, so I'm working with what is possible here.

Ok, still waiting for a steel plate and bolts/washers/nuts to turn up, but have put together the mounting bracket and a part of the Silver Rod.  Used an off-cut of 34mm Galvanised Scaffold Handrail Tube.




Here's the Steel Plate I've ordered to be on the inside of the shed wall, all mounted using M12 Bolts.



Of course, I'll need to mark up and drill 12mm holes.

You can't beat a good antenna raising, the business with the plate reminds me somewhat of the security modifications I have made to my own shed after some reprobate broke in and stole the petrol lawn-mower I must have had for all of a week and used just once. My own silver rod/half wave vertical ringo came down with the recent high winds, only a slight bend in the top section so all is well and with the few nice days we are having it looks as though it may be back up sooner than expected with the addition of some guy lines this time...maybe a few winds of duct tape over the extension pole joins too, it lifted it right out! It is always interesting to see the solutions people come up with for antennas, with the challanges of today's living with smaller gardens, planning and restrictions, nosy neighbours, and of course; her indoors to name but a few.

Sorry to hear about your petrol mower going AWOL, expensive bit of kit, we have three dogs, so they would get very noisy, and whilst they would probably lick a burglar to death, they do put off the ne'er do wells from coming over the fence.

I'm making sure that if and when some neighbour complains about the antennas, that they all meet the requirements for siting, ie. not visible from the kerb directly in front of my front door, not within 2m of a boundary fence, and not within 5m of a neighbours building, and no higher than the trees blocking the skyline, I'm on a hill anyway, and the gardens are big here, so the take off for signals shouldn't be a problem.

I am going to try and mount it nearer the shed corner, as stephen Gunrunner suggested earlier, might help with bracing inside, but the good news is I erected heavy duty shelving on the shed walls, so it's probably got a lot more strength than I credit it for.

Neighbours haven't been a problem, my neighbour one side finds it all interesting, the other side actually pruned a tree that was encroaching into my garden and would have had branches interfering with my random dipole running 2m parallel to her fence, I only mentioned that I might have to trim a couple of branches, and she had a professional come round and tidy it up quite considerably, to the extent that nothing crosses the boundary fence at all.

However, you never know quite how people react, and I don't push any boundaries to make sure.

Only one neighbour has been an issue, it was no surprise who it was in fairness, this woman seems to pro-actively seek out things to be unhappy about.  I went for "temporary" installation and once it had been up and down two-three times it was just left up.  The local authority tried to charge me a fee for having CCVT cameras up when the antenna complaint came in.  "Here, Governer, do you have a license for those cameras?"   It never ends with these people trying to charge you a fee with their rules that they appear to make up as they go along I notice.  Do you know what a "licence" really is?  It is when they take away your God given right to do something and sell it back to you!  The paperwork went swiftly in the bin, and I just put the phone down when one of them called me, they never called back as they know they didn't have a leg to stand on.  

I spoke to another chap locally on the radio about it, they had done something similar to him, as
a teen he put a wooden shed up and they pushed him into applying for planning permission and paying a fee.  Being younger and still at his parents his mum thought it best he "did it the right way" unaware that wooden sheds are temperarly structures and no planning application is required.  The other neighbours have been great though with a couple striking up conversations about their DXing back in the day, one had two sigma 4 antennas (vector 4000 now I believe) set up as twin co-phasers on flats which I would have very much liked to see such a spectacle and had a shot of his Sommercamp radio fed into them.     Another guy told me he didn't mind what I put up so I am planning on slowly adding to them over time, leave it for a spell than add something else. I feel as long as you are more or less sticking to the guidelines it's not as though anybody is going to take a measure to it once it's 30-40 feet in the air and they do appear far smaller from a distance.  

Fortunately, I had picked up a second hand bargain with the mower, it was a profesional one you would get of you had a landscaping business maybe, it ended up being more of a short term rental but they ripped a large section from the front of the shed where the hasp and shed-alarm (for all the good it did) was bolted onto.  I now have metal reinforcements and a chain bolted to the side to secure items to inside of it.  If it's not bolted down they will take it in this day and age.  I do remember going out and not locking the doors, the police are hopeless too, I had an attempted break in, three days later they appeared, refusing to take an item the would be thief had clearly handled to check for fingerprints.  I honestly wonder just whose side they are on these days with the criminal seemingly having more rights than victim in this day and age?

Anyway, these things are sent to try us, I am currently looking into guy lines to get the antenna back up as I am missing out on some great conditions it seems, I have had some great contacts on 20m with a wire doublet in the loft but I enjoy nothing more than hearing those DX stations coming in on my CB and silver rod.  It is the simplicity of it, I spoke to an ex-pat recently on the coast of Spain just on his multimode CB and a wire vertical he had made himself...what else do you need?

I suppose the roof of the shed is out of the question.  We have a small garage fairly useless to get a car inside it, She uses 90% of it for storage, I get 10% for the bike and tool box. Love her to death. Anyways,  can't seem to load a picture (I'm not PC smart by anymeans)   running  8  3m long ground radials on mine .(Silver rod 5/ 8 )  around 8m from the base to the ground.  Yes DX conditions have been  great.  I haven't made any Div 26 contacts as of yet, but plenty of Div14.   I live in a unincorporated part of town/city, it can be a good thing most times, others,  just have to deal with some neighbors shenanigans.  2CT351 N Colorado

Quick update

Still waiting for a Stainless Steel Plate to be delivered, I'm sure they will blame the pandemic as normal, it's a week late, so have not been able to do anything about erecting the Silver Rod as yet.

So have concentrated on Target Shooting this last week.

Finally, the sodding stainless steel plate to reinforce the side of the shed has arrived, I'll be drilling tomorrow.




I know, stainless steel, its a little OTT, but feck it, I'm worth it.

Ok, its up...




Put the Antenna Analyser on it and its currently resonant at 26.2 Mhz 1.5:1, but its windy today, so will wait for a calm day before shortening it a bit.

Ok, I'm not happy with the mounting on the shed, I'm going to have to take it down at the weekend to tune it anyway, so am going to make a better effort on the mounting.

OK, altered the mounting on the shed, tuned the antenna to 27.478 MHz 1.1:1, it now covers 26.965 thro to 27.991 never getting above 1.4:1 at the lower and upper band edges.

The antenna was 46cm too long at the analyser as a 5/8 wave, the top of the sigma is now about 8m AGL, 2m AGL at the base, I's much happier now.   

46cm sounds a lot Wayne but then again i haven't played around with the old silverod for years but remember some needing big adjustments.

Knights have a note against the 5/8 silver rod on their web page which says "We have found 5/8 wave antennas without large groundplanes do not swr as easily as a 1/2 wave". Some of the issues people have found, and possibly the reason for you having to make a major adjustment, might be because of the closeness it is mounted to the ground.

Really pleased you've got it sorted though as it won't be long *fingers crossed* that the Euro skip will start regularly rolling in

Alan Pilot wrote:

46cm sounds a lot Wayne but then again i haven't played around with the old silverod for years but remember some needing big adjustments.

I suspect there's adjustment in it from 10 metres to 12 metres, I initially adjusted to the set marks on the Sigma, and the last section at the base appeared to have a significant shortening mark, and was still centre resonant at 26.2 MHz, so had the last section been fully extended I suspect it would get nearer to the 12m Band.

As it is even with significant shortening by 46cm, there is still a lot more length that could be reduced, so it might tune down to 28-29.7.

So I adjusted twice in the end, first calculation suggested shortening by 33cm, so I decided on reducing by 30cm, and a second measurement suggested shortening by a further 17cm, so I decided to try another 16cm instead, and the centre resonance dropped right down to 1.1:1 at ~27.480 approx, and as I was aiming for 27.478 I felt that was good enough.

The radials are a little small and I did consider that the adjustment was a lot more than I was expecting, but the Antenna Analyser can't lie, I suspect that I'll find out how effective it is when I fire up the Albrecht.

Could be the mounting position, my water table, or the proximity to the 20ft lattice tower about 8 to 9ft away, certainly the SWR changed when I moved any nearer, so there could be other factors going on.

SangueG wrote:

Knights have a note against the 5/8 silver rod on their web page which says "We have found 5/8 wave antennas without large groundplanes do not swr as easily as a 1/2 wave". Some of the issues people have found, and possibly the reason for you having to make a major adjustment, might be because of the closeness it is mounted to the ground.

Really pleased you've got it sorted though as it won't be long *fingers crossed* that the Euro skip will start regularly rolling in

Yup, I did all resonant length calculations as a full wave after analysing, then reduced the adjustment figure to 5/8, and then still decided that it was obviously too much, yet even with 30cm instead of 33cm the SWR Curve got to be more of a inverted peak at resonance, but then suggested a lot more should be adjusted.

This is fairly normal on wire dipoles at 7 MHz (happened to a lesser extent on the 40m dipole HF Whips I put together, although less of a move in the bell curve), the characteristics change as you get nearer to your target resonance, and the bell curve moves more or less than predicted, hence always cutting or folding long, and doing several adjustments.

I was quite surprised to get to my target resonance with just two adjustments, usually it takes a lot more fiddling.

Yup, close to the ground as I didn't fancy sending my son up and down the 20ft lattice tower loads of times to gain just 6m of extra height, particularly as I'm on a bit of high ground at an antenna mount of 76m (+ 2m on the shed) AGL in the middle of the Shropshire Plain.

Also, if you've seen the number of antennas currently on the tower I think I'd be pushing the boundaries a tad with the XYL and the neighbours if it were at 12m high, especially as I have a 26ft Butternut HF-9V to go at ground level in the middle of her new landscaped lawn in front of my new air rifle range at the bottom of the garden.

The bald patch on top of my head as a result of her thumb over the years means I know what I can and cannot get away with after 35 years of marriage, ha.

Such wonderful bleedin weather, eh?

Well, I've heard Italians and Germans on FM this afternoon, still not worked out how to use the Albrecht, looks like some reading I need to do of the manual, but as I joined this forum I thought it appropriate I plumbed in the CB first.




I'll have to look at nets/skeds, did put out a call on Ch19 FM for a radio check, but so far not heard anyone local.

Nice, you're all set to go now Wayne  There's been a quite a bit of Brazil coming in on 11m late evening's last couple of nights, to my QTH anyways.

No one gave me a rig check on ch19 FM around here until Scotland rolled in on the skip last year  Hopefully there's a few more local people on the air around by you.

Put my silver rod up on sunday attached to the dogs pen,hopefully get some success will send pics when done,newbie question swr when in final position or before it goes up.have seen vids on youtube of guys doing both to me it seems logical to do it in antennas final position, also picked up a lot of brazil in car on a president bill on sat

Yup, always best to tune it somewhere near using maths, then mount it and do final tuning once the coax is ready for attaching to your radio.

Means a lot of faffing putting it up and down, adjusting, and repeat, but basically, the final mounting position can lead to inductance and capacitance issues that push the antenna out of tune, these are due to proximity to metal structures, the actual ground water level in your location, and the compromise of where you're able to mount it, so its worth taking the time to make the adjustments in situ.

Even siting portable antennas requires tuning adjustment, say during DX activation, Emergency Comms, Leisure Use, etc,.

I always used Inverted-V antennas when I went on canal boat holidays, charging the leisure battery during the day's travel, and then erecting a telescopic mast lashed on the bow or stern in the evenings and pegging out across a basin or along the edge of the tow path.

Always took an antenna analyser, always found the antenna could be brought into resonance by adjusting the tensions on the ends of the insulated ropes holding out the wire legs.  Not always an in-line V due to compromise.