The best way to get more contacts is to get your antenna up higher and there’s more than one method of accomplishing this. If you are on a fixed base operation you would erect a taller antenna mast or raise your tower height by adding sections to it. Portable operations such as Field Day, EmComm, special events and public service can accomplish this by using a taller mast or structure for their antennas. But there is another method for increasing your HAAT (Height Above Average Terrain) is to pack up and go hilltopping.
Hilltopping is where amateur radio operators pack up their camping gear, radio gear, antennas for the bands they will operate on and head out to the tallest hill or mountain they can get up onto. Once up there they setup their camps and antennas and go to work in scouring the bands for new grids for their logs. Hilltopping and camping out go hand-in-hand so be prepared as the Boy Scouts would say.
So you are wondering how Tilt-N-Raise fits into hilltopping since it appears as if the Tilt-N-Raise portable antenna mount was designed for vertical antennas. Well the beauty of the Tilt-N-Raise antenna mount is that you can mount anything on the mast that you wish to use. There isn’t any reason you couldn’t mount a horizontal boom at the top of the mast and attach your yagi and/or dish antennas on it.
Hilltopping Resources
- N2MH Lighthouse Locator
- [ http://www.n2mh.net/lighthse.htm]
- N2MH RoveSite Locator
- [ http://www.n2mh.net/rovesite/rovesite.htm]
- Northern Lights Radio Society 10 GHz and Up Operating Sites
- [ http://www.nlrs.org/10GHz_and_Up/10GHz_Sites.htm]
- Online Map Creation using AZ_PROJ
- [ http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml]
For more information you can search Google® on the terms:
1 HAAT – Antenna Height Above Average Terrain. The FFC web site has a great deal of information about HAAT and they even have a great calculator you can use for HATT.
[ http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/haat_calculator.html]
2 GRID – An explanation from the ARRL:
“An instrument of the Maidenhead Locator System (named after the town outside London where it was first conceived by a meeting of European VHF managers in 1980), a grid square measures 1° latitude by 2° longitude and measures approximately 70 × 100 miles in the continental US. A grid square is indicated by two letters (the field) and two numbers (the square), as in FN31, the grid square within which W1AW, ARRL’s Maxim Memorial Station, resides.
Each subsquare is designated by the addition of two letters after the grid square, as FN44IG. These more precise locators are used as part of the exchange in the 10-GHz contest. They measure 2.5 minutes latitude by 5 minutes longitude, roughly corresponding to 3 × 4 miles in the continental US.”
Page tags: amateur radio, ham radio, hilltop, VHF, UHF, SHF, microwave, rovers, grids, grid squares, gridsquares, portable operations