Why Offer an Antenna?

Blue Ridge Amateur Radio is pleased to announce that we're now offering antennas. The great news is that these antennas will be priced as low as possible and all of the proceeds collected from antenna sales will be donated to the Watauga Amateur Radio Club (WARC). The Watauga Amateur Radio Club, like most other clubs ,performs a tremendous amount of work for the good of the community including providing EMCOMM services, field support for regional bicycle and marathon races, community outreach and education. Here are some of the important regional programs that WARC contributes to.

- Emergency Fest: https://www.facebook.com/WataugaCountyEmergencyFest/
- New River Marathon: https://www.newrivermarathon.com/
- The Blue Ridge Brutal: https://blueridgebrutal.org/
- The Hellbender: https://hellbenderbikeride.org/

WARC's involvement in hurricane Helene, which occurred in 2024, was highly praised by the Watuaga County Emergency Management officials. Volunteers from WARC provided emergency shelter communications and support for the entire county and participated heavily with the Red Cross to provide communications when all other forms of communications failed, including all of the official UHF repeater based communications used by Watauga County police, fire and rescue squad entities.

As a member of WARC, we feel strongly that continued support for these emergency preparedness and community outreach programs is extremely import, which is why we have decided that all proceeds (less material costs) will be donated to the club. The money will be used for communications equipment (antennas, tripods, field radios), temporary shelters (tents, chairs, tables) and resources for volunteers (water, food, transportation).

Antenna Details

Our first antenna offering is aimed squarely at field operations like POTA, SOTA, IOTA and Field Day. For this, we have developed a highly portable Delta Loop style antenna. This Delta Loop is light weight and can be transported very easily. The loop is apex fed (apex at the bottom) and uses telescopic vertical risers that can extend to over 25 feet in length and collapse to a very small 25 inches. The entire antenna was designed for quick assembly and disassembly using wingnuts for all of the hardware attachments. The antenna comes with diagonal wires for 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 meter operation. The entire antenna can be assembled and deployed while mounted to a tripod (tripod not included) Each of the segments in the telescopic rods are exactly 20 inches long, which means that the total length of the vertical risers can be quickly determined by simply dividing the total lenght of the risers by 20, extending just those segments to full length and then measuring the remaining length with a simple 12 inch ruler.

The advantages of an apex fed Delta Loop are numerous. The impedance of this antenna at the feed point is a perfect 50 + 0j ohms impedance, depending on ground conditions. This means that any length of 50 ohm coax can be used with these antennas without too much impedance transformation. Your mileage will vary depending on ground conditions where you setup the antenna. Small variations in impedance can easily be overcome by any transceiver that can handle a 3:1 SWR with the help of an internal tuner, making this antenna great for field activities. Additionally, this antenna is directional, provides several DB of gain over a dipole, has an incredibly good take off angle and radiation pattern. See the picture below of the radiation pattern.