Stealth Ham Radio Antenna the HOA will Never Find - Chameleon CHA Porta Mast with CHA Hybrid Mini

I'm a licensed amateur radio operator that lives in a homeowners association I comply with the spirit of those rules but I don't let them keep me from communicating all around the world I can communicate on ham radio locally regionally and globally I also review products from time to time but when I first reviewed the chameleon antenna child Porter Mast I was thinking of using it on an occasional basis Now understand I don't sink several hundred pounds of concrete in my backyard for any product unless I do intend to use it this was a serious commitment so I accepted that chameleon antenna produced another great product it fit into my use case I was interested in it but I've gone far beyond the original thought of occasional use and now it has become my station reference antenna and today I want to share with you why I've changed my mind and take you through the process of how I've made this completely stealth here at the HOA some people that have watched my videos on the child Porter Mass so far have said this makes sense to them even if they don't live in an HOA for those of you that think this might have application and you do live in an HOA the first question you must ask is does my HOA permit the permanent use of flagpoles and if the answer to that is yes this might be a good fit for you now I already had a 73 foot unfed stealth in my yard it went out to the front Road over top of a sidewalk so it could be seen by people so I've decided to pull that down and take the wire backyard up to my chop portamast it just makes it that much more stealth but to make it completely stealth I can't take my cha hybrid mini in this case and put it on a cha Spike and put it in the ground because then it's visible and then I've got to worry about my lawn guy running it over so I chose to put it in this utility box I did this on my other wire antenna I've left that box on the side of the house in the event that post tropical storm or hurricane I need to put up that other antenna at which point in time the people from the HOA will be lining up begging to talk on my radio but for now I've put this new box on the back wall of the house and now I'm going to take you through all the steps to build it out to hide your child hybrid micro or mini I went with a mini because I'm hoping someday somebody sends me an amplifier to use with this we'll come back to this box build in a minute and even though I'm not giving you step-by-step instructions I think you're pretty much picking up what's actually happening and we'll get that to the Finish Line in addition to being stealth they want to talk to you about how versatile this antenna system is with the child Porter Mast and the cha hybrid mini with a 30 foot wire it's only 30 foot for me because I have a small backyard and based on where the antennas on the house where it's attached on the back corner and where the child pointerest had to be located that's the longest wire I could get up the longer the wire the better for you this is working for me it is Tuesday evening 7 30 p.m and hurricane Adalia is coming up the coast of Florida we're in a pretty good space where the track was coming we're going to be fine but I am paying attention to the hurricane watch net I've got my fx4cr dialed into 14325 and the hurricane watch net is occurring right now I'm listening to a local repeater system and i4ce it's a connected repeater system of five repeaters here in the Tampa Bay area and we have a skywar net control going on there right now and then I've got my SDS 100 scanner so we're in a safe place the back windows are boarded up because the storm is going to blow at us pretty hard from the south wind coming from the south so we're protected and I'm listening just in case there is some event that I need to be aware of that said I needed to pull down the child Porter mass that I needed to get that 30 foot wire put away let me roll a clip in here and show you how I pulled that off this is how versatile it is so just go into the backyard you can see that I quickly take down the Porta Mast it's a interlocking system and you just twist and lock as you're extending an unlock and twist as you're coming down let's respectfully put that flag away and once that's done come back and grab the chopped Porter Mast and just pull it right out of the in-ground concrete sleeve let me spin the camera over here and show you what I've done in this utility box I have taken a chameleon Winder and I made sure there was room in the utility box to put the winder and I've cut a slit in the bottom side of this box so once I wind up the 30 foot wire and I put this Winder back into the box I can just leave the wire attached to the cha hybrid mini wrap it around the Box tuck the winder in place with all the wire when my storm passes which will be probably sometime by midday or late day tomorrow I'll be able to put up the chopped water Mast and my wire again it's just reverse these steps and instantaneously I have a flag flying in the backyard and a stealth antenna Mast so it's stealth and it's versatile that's what I like about this setup let's get back to building out the box I used the 2x6 just like a drill press in other words I wanted that bracket to hold still and not spin while I was trying to drill the hole for the bottom stud of the cha hybrid mini let's get that off clean it off and get it back into the polymer case and we're going to start marking some holes we'll start with marking the hole where the bottom stud of the hybrid mini is going to go and then you're going to see me drill just a really tiny hole there that tight hole is just a pilot hole and then I'll go in with a larger bit these markings that I'm putting on there right now that will be where I put tapcons into the concrete wall so I'm just marking all the holes in the bracket very straightforward let's pre-drill the bottom hole and then we'll go in here with a larger bit the pre-drilling of the pilot hole is just to keep the larger bit from spinning and going off Target so we're going to change over to a larger bit we'll get the larger hole there and then that will accept the bottom stud of the jaw High grid mini all straightforward right we're going to do the same thing on the top here we're going to drill a much larger hole with a hole saw that's going to allow that shackle to protrude through the top of this and then that will allow us to attach our wire and have a strain relief to the top side of this case one more pilot hole in the bottom and one more larger hole with the hole saw and that's where I'm putting the right angle adapter to go through the bottom of this polymer case for my coax feed and then we're ready to dry fit everything together here on the bench top before we go to the backyard and install this on the wall I could purchase an antenna already in an external case but because I like the flexibility of being able to take the cha hybrid mini somewhere else portable later if I change this configuration that's why I went with it I'm stretching out my wire and then raising the flagpole slash antenna Mast so I can see exactly where I need to place this box on the back wall I do have about 18 inches of shock cord connected to the very top of the Porta Mast right at the bottom of the first section and that gives me the flex in my wire and here I am just simply tensioning things up a little bit and making sure I'm happy with placement as I drill that first pilot hole once I drill that first pilot hole everything is pretty much set from this point forward I have three holes to drill two at the top one at the bottom left and then at the bottom right remember I have that metal L bracket that metal L bracket is holding all the weight or the tension so to speak of the tall hybrid mini as the wire is pulling it away from the box and away from the house so that metal bracket is the strength of this setup so all you see me doing here is drilling my three holes two in the top one on the bottom left and then three holes actually in that bracket I do need to remove the cha hybrid mini to get to that bracket but again here I'm just dry fitting everything and that allows me to make sure that I am plumb and level and Yep this is the right place to use a torpedo level instead of a four foot level if you're installing that Porter mask in the backyard in a concrete pillar you'll want a four foot level torpedo level will work just fine for this application of course you have to use the appropriate hardware for your installation by now you've probably figured out I'm drilling into concrete block stucco so I'm using a hammer drill it's the only way to easily get through concrete actually block and then I'm using tapcon screws those tapcon screws are specifically manufactured to work with concrete they grip and they are strong and now with the Box on the wall the cha hybrid mini back in the Box we're ready to go to the next step here we are next day after I've had a chance to sleep on my antenna installation and we'll talk about what else I did but first there's a mystery black box with a chameleon label on it well you'll see this in a future video it's not on the chameleon website yet but you might have a guess at what this is there is a similar unit that goes into the shack and allows me to connect various antennas to that inside unit send a signal out to this black box on the wall and guess what we can tune antennas for any rig including those that don't have internal tuners stay tuned for that video to come as I slept on my antenna install overnight I realized there was room in this outside utility box to add the winder that wasn't part of the original plan it just worked out that way and now that you know it you can actually plan for it so you're going to see me in a second cut a slit in the bottom left hand corner of the plastic box once I open it up and that allows me to take my wire leave it connected to the cha hybrid mini and keep it on the winder and not have to disconnect anything so I can wind it up on the wire and I can just Loop the wire a little bit around the outside right edge of the Box close up the box and it's good for any time I have inclement weather I.E Category 3 category four category five hurricanes coming my way and I want to take my flagpole slash child Porter Mast down or I want to take the chop pour the Mast to a poda activation or for field day so it lets me tidy things up here in the box and be completely self-contained I can wrap this up in a matter of minutes and when I go to setup again I can take the winder out of the box and be set up again in a matter of minutes and that's what we'll show you here next with the chameleon test unit attached to the wall now I just need to swap my cable around so I can operate this tuner from the shack I'm using my fx4cr which is a tiny handheld transceiver it goes up to 20 watts it does not have an internal tuner with this new chameleon unit from The Shack I was able to tune up my 30 foot wire going from my cha hybrid mini up to my porter Mast I was able to test the long wire going from the top of the tuner itself up to the portamast I was able to test out the cha mpas 2.0 and on and on this tuner tuned everything I threw at it remember to make sure that you always waterproof any of your coax outside and that's what I'm doing now with this tape that just stretches and seals everything off so that you make sure you don't get any water intrusion into your coax and really mess with your SWR I'm going to go through the breakdown one more time and to set it back up it's just the reverse there were a mirror image of each other I know I've gone over it already but while I talk through the reasons why this is now the station reference antenna and why I highly recommend it I just thought I would show this to you one final time I spend more time walking around than I actually do putting up the chop Porta Mast and installing my antenna wire why did I go this route instead of an actual flagpole antenna well first of all is the cost of the flagpole antenna before I go to that this was my first attempt at winding this up I woke up in the morning and thought I wanted to make this modification to that box I'm doing just the circular wind around that Winder you saw me earlier in the video doing the figure eight and that works a little bit better but why the chop Porta Mast and a separate antenna wire why not a flagpole antenna which I'm allowed to have here in the HOA I'm going to say cost those flag pulling antennas can be fifteen hundred two thousand dollars or more by the time you get an external tuner out there and the whole setup in your Shack to control it the chopped portamast is a couple of hundred dollars and then you can put whatever antenna on it that you want so for me this was a more cost effective way to get a flagpole in the backyard here at the HOA as well as adapt to a number of different types of antennas portability if I go with the flagpole and antenna that cost me two grand it's in the ground and it's never moving away when I want to go operate portable here if I want to go poda if I want to operate somewhere for field day I can do that and finally it would be chameleon quality the quality of chameleon is known to many of us who have experienced it ourselves with the antennas that we have purchased and used and that to me is something that's very important as I set this up in the backyard I'll do a final review of the child Porter mass that I'm going to tell you right now the quality is phenomenal you won't find much better than what chameleon offers in this chop Porta Mast so that's my thought on this this is why I put this as my station reference antenna I have flexibility it's cost effective it's high quality it's versatile for me it's the station referencing antenna here at HOA ham qth I hope you found this beneficial talk you soon friend 73.

Channel: HOA Ham

Views: 180,551

Keywords: HOA Ham, hoa stealth hf antenna, HOA Antenna, Ham Radio, amateur radio, Stealth antenna, hoa ham radio antenna, hoa hf antenna, antenna restrictions, stealth ham radio antenna, ham radio antenna, stealth antenna concealment, Hf antenna for hoa, portable antenna, portable ham radio, hf antenna, pota antenna, ham radio, hoa antenna, ham shack build, ham shack design, Chameleon Antenna, Cha Porta Mast, Flagpole, Flagpole Antenna, Cha Hybrid Mini

Id: 9TIkoeSqI8E

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 07 2023