Wishing a speedy recovery to the essential employee at Wolf River Coil, but in the meantime…

Their antenna systems breaks down to five essential elements.

• The Loading Coil
• The Mount
• The Base
• The Whip
• The Radials

Lets look at each and find some alternatives.

The Loading Coil
First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room.  The happenings are 20 meters right now.  For a POTA activator, in this moment of solar cycle, 20 trumps all the other bands. It’s open from can’t see to can’t see and booms during the heat of the day.  In my experiences, the skip on 20 is often too long for closer stations and typically too short for real DX, but it’s chock full of U.S. stations in the middle.

WRC offers several coils, but we’re basically looking at three different options, the adjustable Silver Bullet 1000 that’s 80-10, the adjustable Silver Bullet Mini that’s 40-10, and the Sporty 40.  We need to understand that we don’t need any of these coils to get on the air.  We can easily get to the action with just the whip.

But, I like to play on 80 in the wee hours and 40 in the morning.  I’m just saying it’s not necessary for a perfectly acceptable POTA station.

I strongly recommend managing your D-expectations and forgoing the coil for now.  You can always home brew one if you want.

The Mount
Includes two critical functions. 

1. Allows attaching the 3/8″ x 24 TPI whip.
2. Allows attaching uhf connector for the feedline.

The first is pretty simple.  We need a 3/8 x 24 TPI to SO-239 adapter to join the whip to the feedline.  Our good buddies on the Citizen’s Band have been doing this exact thing for decades.  You just need to use a little thought and imagination to find the best solution for your needs.

I’ll cover three types of mounts; the mag mount, the mirror mount, and what I call the clamping mount.

Mag Mounts
The mag mount is pretty obvious, it slaps on the roof of your car with a magnet and uses the metal body of your car as the ground plane.  It can be tedious with the 17-foot whip because you’ll have to reach so high to tune the whip and.  It’s an option, but probably not the best.  I recommend a tri-mag mount like one from TRAM or MFJ.  Wind load on the long whip is enough to tip the single mount even when the car’s stationary.  Go with the tri-mag.

Tram Tri-Magnet Cb Antenna Mount with Rubber Boots & Coaxial Cable, 5″, Silver (2692)

For the other mounts, you’ll need the 3/8x24TPI to SO-239 adapter.  Some come with it, some don’t either way, it’s helpful to have a spare or two in your shack for home brew adventures.

Here for adapters

Mirror Mount
This is the basic form.  It’s simple, has unlimited possibilities, and is affordable. You can clamp it to anything that will fit inside it like a camera tripod, a bolt sticking out of something, even the handles of a state park bar-b-que grill.  Lots of activators clamp it to a steel rod or landscaping nail they can drive in the ground.

Here for mirror mounts

Clamping Mount
I really like the adjustable one where the clamping action doesn’t require any tools.  It’s fast and convenient – good chance it can even clamp to your trailer hitch.  Regardless, this is an option that’s worth having in your kit, whether it’s your go-to or not.

Here for clamping mounts

The Base
You need something to hold the mount.  It needs to be structurally sturdy enough to withstand the bending force that comes from wind loading on the Whip.  This is not about tipping over, it’s about bending the base where the whip mounts.  You can just anchor it to resist tipping.

I used to carry some gear in a milk crate in the back of my Outback.  I had about 40 pounds of junk in there.  I mounted a mirror mount through the holes on the sides of the milk crate and used it as my first base for a vertical antenna.  It never blew over – not once.  But, fancy folk will want a fancy base and there are several to choose from and there are probably knock-offs or even knock-betters than the well thought out WRC tripod.

Any easy search on google for lighting tripod base will return more choices than you can sift through.  I just recommend considering the dimensions (portable radio prefers a manageable footprint), and game through where you’re going to attach the mount.

Here for bases

The Whip
Yes, Ham Sticks will absolutely work.  No question.  They need a mount and ground plane.  But, I prefer more element in the air, it hears better and radiates better.  I recommend a 17-foot stainless steel whip. 17 feet is 1/4 wave of 20 meters.  You can retract the whip to tune for higher bands 17, 15, 12, 10, and 6.  But, it’s too short for 40m without a coil.

Here for 17′ Telescoping Whips

I prefer the whip from Chameleon Antennas CHA-SS17.  It had good reviews when I bought it and has proven durable and dependable.

The Radials
A WRC set comes with three, 33ft wires but there is absolutely, positively no reason to buy these.  It’s just wire, make your own with WalMart wire.  I currently use four bundles of three 15ft wire in each.  The wire bundles terminate in a battery terminal clip and I just clamp them onto the tripod legs.

The “Flying Carpet” approach with a 4×8 length of metal (not nylon) screen door screen works great but is bulking going in and out of your car. 

Faraday cloth from amazon works just as well as the window screen.

In conclusion, WRC makes a great setup for effective portable ops but they’re not open for business right now. A blessing in disguise because it’s forced me to think outside the box, to find work arounds and alternatives. Turns out, there’s plenty of options with the same performance characteristics without paying for the flagship.

TNX ES 73
KA5TXN
DitWit