ARRL Field Day is June 26-27. Bob Glorioso, W1IS, and Bob Rose, KC1DSQ, describe how they made an inexpensive, easy-to-build portable antenna for the event. Their goal was to have an antenna that they could fit in a minivan.

You can buy many of the materials for this antenna from a hardware store. That includes the spreaders, which are two 10-foot-long wooden dowels, and #14 THHN wire. The result was an antenna you can take into the field with you, that has good gain and a good front-to-back ratio on the upper half of the 40-meter band.

2021 ARRL Field Day Guide
Sponsored by Ham Radio Outlet

Check out our new tear-out, take-along ARRL Field Day Guide. This QST supplement has tips on setting up and running your station, a safety checklist, a handy guide for tracking bonus points, and more! Cook up a crowd favorite with our delicious Field Day chili recipe featuring our specially formulated, private-label chili seasoning, which will be available in the ARRL store next week!

Predicting how solar activity and atmospheric conditions will influence radio propagation can be a challenge, but there are easy-to-use online tools that can help all hams. This article introduces two of them – the Solar-Terrestrial Data widget created by Paul Herrman, NØNBH, which uses scientific data to present a snapshot prediction of conditions on several frequencies, and William Hepburn’s Tropospheric Ducting Forecast tool, which forecasts propagation on VHF and UHF.