Winter is just around the corner so I set my Wolf River coil Silver Bullet 1000 in the backyard. The leaves on the tree are gone and soon this spot will be filled in with snow- so its a great spot to set up a vertical antenna. No one will bother it until March or April and I can just shovel out a little path so I can change the frequency. The antenna is just mounted on a steel fence post. It looks like its a little bit in the air but really once it starts snowing the snow the pile up to about here. I’ve got three ground radials of 32 feet each laid out. They will soon get buried with snow and a 50 foot piece of RG-8X going into the house and down to the shack. I like the variety this antenna gives me. Since I do more HF operation from the shack in the winter months I can switch for the best signal between the G5RV strung up above me or the vertical antenna in the back yard.
But the purpose of this video is to talk about a new product from Wolf River Coils and that is the extension rod kit. Recently I was at the Fox Cities amateur radio club swap fest in Appleton WI and had the opportunity to chat with the guys at Wolf River Coils. They’ve come out with a new accessory for their coil called the UAFI or You Asked For It kit. The UAFI is a pair of extension rods that convert your base loaded antenna into a center loaded antenna.
The rods themselves are 24 inches long made of aluminum with 3/8×24 threads with couplers and jam nuts on the end. By adding the rods you move the coil up about four feet which is going to do a couple of things for you. First it will increase your bandwidth a bit but more importantly it increases your overall efficiency as center loading a vertical antenna increases its radiation resistance and reduces capacitance reactance at the feed point. Those are some pretty big words so I think I’ll put in these rods in to center load the antenna and then we’ll put it on the meter and test it out.
Summary
Wolf River Coils has a new accessory for Silver Bullet 500 & 1000 coils called the UAFI or You Asked For It kit. The UAFI is a pair of extension rods that convert your base loaded antenna into a center loaded antenna. Here I test the rods and give you my impression of their performance.
Wolf River Coils Silver Bullet 1000 https://www.wolfrivercoils.com/
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