Slim-Jim

Since the flagpole Yagi fell, and I’m not rushing to put it back up, I figured I’d see if I can get my 2-meter antennas in the tree higher.

I threw the line up over the tree to have it drop down the middle, and I now pull the slim-jim antenna up through the middle of the tree. It’s not the highest antenna, above the ground-plane antenna.

I also took a moment to untangle the halyards and feed lines. I looped the 2 feed lines through a spring clip on the roof line to keep them from slapping around so much.

I’m getting good APRS decodes off the lower antenna, and strong repeater signals on the high antenna, but it doesn’t quite receive the 985 repeater.

The slim jim I put up for APRS was hanging right next to the feed line of the higher quarter-wave antenna I use for local analog traffic. The feed line was de-tuning the slim jim, so reception of APRS traffic was almost non-existent. I could swap the antennas and the higher one worked much better, and the lower slim jim was greatly degraded for other FM traffic. Usually the BTech is on the lower slim jim, and the Quansheng is scanning on the higher quarter-wave.

To correct the problem, I pulled the 2 antennas up on separate ropes and separated them by a couple feet. The quarter-wave is still mounted higher than the slim jim.