My dock - the only place I can install antennas without having to deal with Navy housing regulations. All the antennas are practically invisible from the back yard, and totally invisible from the main road.

Looking east; all four verticals can be seen here. I modeled the antennas with EZNEC to locate them to minimize unwanted interaction. While they are all close together, interaction is minimal.

From right: 80/160 HF2V, 20m element one, 40/30/17/15, and finally, 20m element two. The antennas are visible from the water, however I don't interfere with the neighbors and they could care less about them.

Looking Northwest back toward the house. The power lines make it impossible to put antennas anywhere behind the house. Fortunately, they are quiet, except on rare occasions when it hasn't rained in weeks and salt builds up on the insulators.

Closer view of the elevated radials. Every antenna has two resonant radials per band, except for 80 and 160 where there is only one. EZNEC shows 38 ohm impedance at the feed point with one radial, close to the ideal 36 ohm 1/4 wave vertical impedance over perfect ground. To contrast, one radial over average ground shows an ugly 67 ohms. Salt water rocks! Radial length is critical when trying to resonate the verticals.

detail of the PVC stand-offs. The wires fit nicely in grooves cut partially in the plastic with a compound miter saw.

Feed point of the 40/30/17/15m vertical. The coax choke is there "just in case" - I've always done it in the past. Does it make a difference? Who knows. Parallel wires are run along the 34ft vertical for 30 and 17m

Another view showing the parallel wires for 30 and 17M. Tuning is critical - clipping one inch can change resonance by more than 200Khz. The antenna works *very well* on both of the WARC bands. This antenna also loads on 15m as a 3/4 wave vertical. I don't have any antennas currently for 12 or 10m.

Feed point of the HF2V showing homebrew coax capacitor. This allows me to run 1.5KW versus 500W with the stock doorknob caps. I plan on changing this with a vacuum variable shortly.

My previous coax capacitor were two lengths of cable in parallel. The end got fried - showing the high voltage/current at the feed point. The replacement single length of coax works great, and shows no apparent heating when I go key down for extended periods of time, indicating efficiency is decent. I still have infrequent arcing problems but that is a result of salt spray after some days without rain. I rinse the base off with fresh water regularly to prevent this from happening.

The normally covered switching box for the phased 20m verticals. The antennas are spaced 1/2 wavelength apart, and fed either in phase or 180 degrees out of phase. This gives me a nice figure-8 pattern in the NE/SW or NW/SE directions.

Keys Electric doing some aerial maintenance of power line hardware

The band must be open to HC8N

I recently replaced the 40/30/17/15m vertical with one of the same design, using aluminum radiators and fiberglass standoffs, replacing the unreliable PVC standoffs and wire antenna I had been using. The antenna is bending in ~25 MPH wind, common for winter in Key West.

Detail of the 40/30/17/15m vertical, showing the fiberglass insulators for the 40 and 30m elements, and PVC insulator for the 17m element. All are fed from a single feed point.

Looking up the radiators, and you can see the stand offs, made from a piece of 1/4" thick fiberglass sheet.

P1010517

Modified HF2V - 52ft of aluminum with a 4ft stainless stinger on top. You can also see the [salt water] path to Europe. After the small mangrove island in the back ground, there is nothing but about 80 miles of salt water before you hit the Everglades.

160m matching coil made with 1/4" copper tubing. The hairpin match provides a 50 ohm impedance on 160m, otherwise I would be dealing with a very high SWR due to low radiation resistance.

There are three tap points on the coil for 160. The bandwidth is only 30Khz, with taps at 1825Khz, 1845Khz, and 1875Khz. The wood is blackened due to spray paint - to better hide the white PVC insulators.

the 160m and hairpin coils are bypassed for 80m operation. The hairpin coil is made from an old butternut coil section.

80m loading coil is located where the old butternut 80/40m matching network used to be. 40M didn't work anyway since the vertical is 54ft tall.

Small stealth 6m yagi in the trees....over salt water

Find the creature in the picture....hint....HC8N