QRP: Low-Power Communications

Welcome to the October QRP column. Another summer has snuck by and the few remaining honey-do list items my XYL had for me to complete will need to wait until next year. My wife knows that during summer and fall months, antenna construction, experimentation, contesting, and setting up a portable operation on the trail often take precedence over all else. One of our radio-related squabbles this summer occurred after my brother-in-law announced in early June that he was getting married in South Carolina in July (five weeks later). I immediately reminded my XYL that his wedding was the same day as the IARU HF Championship and that I had spent a lot of time tweaking several of my existing antennas and building a new antenna from homebrew sabertooth wire (this month’s topic) for this contest. Needless to say, my XYL won and I missed this contest. I spent most of the ceremony thinking about the number of contacts I could have made with my new sabertooth wire antenna I had constructed for operation on the low bands. All I remember about the wedding is hearing my brother--in-law and his lady friend say “I do” and the good eats on the dinner buffet – hi!

The Sabertooth Technique

Eric Knight, KB1EHE, wrote an article (“The Sabertooth Wire: An Innovation in Antenna Length Shortening”) for ’s July 2018 issue that got me thinking about how I could make a shortened low-band antenna for use on the trail and at home. Since low sunspot numbers (zero at the time of this writing) have caused contacts on the upper HF bands (10, 15, and 20 meters) to be a difficult challenge with only a few watts of power, I began thinking a sabertooth wire antenna designed for operation on the low bands (40 and 80 meters) may be a blessing for making contacts when working portable.