[Ret10Echo]

Originally Posted by bravo22b

Well it's nice to see one our RTO's doing their homework.

Just to add some information, this HF shot between AP Hill, VA, and Indiana will be done using ALE (and maybe 3G ALE), and it is unclear what control we may or may not have over frequency selection.

To be tactful, we have had varying degrees of success with the frequencies selected in the past by whoever it is that is supposedly doing this for us (the S-6, I suppose).

That said, there is a lot of effort being put into this to make it successful.

To the original poster, keep doing your homework, try searching on this site for "PRC-150", check with your TL as to what materials may be available to make your antennas, since that may affect your choice of what to build. If time and materials allow, my suggestion would be to be prepared to build several different antennas, as Ret10Echo suggested, that should include a long wire and terminated sloping vee. Plan on conducting an LQA with each antenna and recording all the relevant information to include the LQA scores on each freq, time of day, antenna type used, etc.

Recording all this information will allow you to look at what frequencies worked best, which antennas worked better, etc., and start to build your toolkit of what works.

A definite challenge having an ALE net that has stations at varying distances. It becomes a challenge to build an antenna that will meet multiple frequency requirements. Most of those fixed stations will have a multiband array of some size. Not so easily reproduced by the tactical operator.