In Person Club Meeting

Greg Mihran, KJ6ER PERformer, Challenger and Marauder portable antennas for POTA, SOTA, Emergency Communications and HOA Deployments.

The NHRC club meeting on October 20, will feature a presentation by Greg Mihran, KJ6ER, on his highly efficient homebrew portable antennas he has used for POTA (Parks On The Air) activations over the past few years. His free antenna plans have been downloaded over 120,000 times worldwide. The antennas are also ideal for emergency communications as well as quick deployment HOA antennas. He always shares his antenna plans and other ham radio content for free on his callsign website, kj6er.net.

His most popular antenna is the ARRL™ QST award-winning PERformer (Portable, Efficient, Resonant) elevated quarterwave vertical for 40M-6M leveraging a 17’ telescoping whip with two elevated tuned radials 90 degrees apart for some directivity and gain. This portable antenna, with radiation efficiency over 90%, has been in the field for more than five years and is used by portable antenna enthusiasts around the world for excellent regional and continental communications. 

His 2-Element Parasitic PERformerArray provides up to +3.1 dB gain over a single PERformer antenna with a 7.7 front-to-back ratio. His parasitic array includes two PERformer antennas: one as an active radiator fed with coax and the other as a passive reflector placed a quarter wavelength behind it. The 2- Element Phased PERformerArray using electrical length cables to two PERformer antennas provides +4.25 dB more gain than a single PERformer and up to a 22.0 dB front-to-back ratio. The PERformer NVIS Antenna, provides NVIS radiation for HF communications across 40M-30M, as well as high-angle radiation on 20M-6M into the skip zone between ground wave and first hop sky wave communications. 

His Challenger off-center fed halfwave omnidirectional vertical for 20M-6M leverages a 25’ or 17’ telescoping whip and a 4:1 unun on a tripod with a single linked counterpoise. This portable antenna, with efficiency over 94%, is an excellent antenna for both continental and global communications. 

His Dominator end-fed halfwave omnidirectional vertical for 17M-10M leverages a 25’ or 17’ telescoping whip and 49:1 or 56:1 unun on a tripod with a single linked counterpoise. This portable antenna, with efficiency over 90%, has been in the field for more than three years and is an excellent portable DX antenna for global communications on the upper bands. 

His Marauder Moxon-inspired vertical array for 20M-10M leverages an end-fed driven element with two 17’ whips and two band-linked crosswires (at the top and bottom of the whips) to form a vertical rectangle for an average of +3.6 dBi gain and 21 dB front-to-back across all five bands. The antenna features both low angle radiation for global and high angle radiation for regional communications. 

Greg, an Extra-class amateur radio operator based in Campbell, CA, has been operating HF/UHF/VHF since 1987. He has been especially active since retiring in 2022 after a long career in Silicon Valley technology companies. He and his wife, Bonnie, have 5 adult children and 6 grandchildren.

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This is the North Hills Radio Club's monthly general meeting, and will take place both in-person and on Zoom.

The in-person meeting will be held at the Arcade Library near the intersection of Fulton Ave and Marconi Ave, next to the Taco Bell.

 In addition to current club members, anyone interested in ham radio is welcome to join us.

For those unable to attend in-person, the meeting will be conducted in hybrid format with Zoom. Zoom is a videotelephony and online chat service offered through a cloud-based peer-to-peer software platform and is used for teleconferencing, telecommuting, distance education, and social relations. To obtain a copy of the software, visit the Zoom Download  page.

Open Zoom