There is a saying that goes something like, "Big hat - small ranch." But I say, "Big antenna - small radio." It's a good combination.

When I bike to work, I like to have a radio along to chat with other hams. It makes the ride go quickly and I (sometimes) forget the large hills I must climb just to get out of Dodge, or in my case, Golden, Colorado. It's uphill both ways. . . really. For a while I ran 2-meters with a long, colinear J-pole: two 1/2-waves fed with a 1/4-wave, 450-ohm ladder line match. I have received good signal reports from the other side of Denver while on FM simplex. The radio is an old Standard brand HT running five watts. I built the antenna from plans by Steve, KB1DIG. His last diagram on "page 5" shows the version I built.



A film can holds the BNC connector