So I removed the temporary Slim Jim stuck on a fishing pole from the side of the shack. It wasn’t a bad solution but certainly wouldn’t hold up to any real weather. More info on the SlimJim can be found here –> n9tax antennas
Being a cheap ham and having spent a lot of money getting the rest of the ham shack together, I didn’t want to break the bank on the permanent solution. So I settled on a Tram Dual Bander which can be found here –> Amazon Link I did take a minute to inspect all the solder joints and put rubber electrical tape covered with shrink wrap tubing over the main joint (just because I am paranoid). At 8 feet and a reasonable gain for ~$50 I figured I didn’t have much to lose.
So the more interesting piece was the mount. I was playing with a lot of ideas from a ROHN pole to some other type of mast. I came across this mount on Amazon and couldn’t resist for $30 : Winegard gable antenna mount This thing is a beast!! Getting it up to the mounting location took a bit of planning. Lesson learned : Attach the top section first, insert the pole between that and the long gable mount and bolt it in… then bolt in the longer gable mount to the wood. I painted it a nice brown that accented the shack fairly well and after a few hours (that included adding some 2x4s to the underside of the gable for support) I was on the air. SWR was fairly flat over the 2 meter and 70 cm bands and was able to hit all my favorite repeaters.
Some pics :
Antenna up!
Gable Mount view
Pre-install
W4PFI 