Executive Summary (because we don't want to waste your time)
1) A brief history of my history with antenna bags
2) A review of a great, inexpensive waist pack that works for shorter antennas
3) A review of a pair of inexpensive, purpose-built military surplus antenna bags, good for antennas with elements 17" long or shorter
And lots of pictures, like this.
The Details
KA9 Papa. Papa's got a brand new bag.
Sorry, couldn't help myself. I digressed and bad punned in the first para. Great start.
In my defense, I offer the following.
Imagine if you will, ala Rod Serling, a General Electric 8 transistor radio, bought for the Cuban missile crisis, stored in a dirt-floored crawl space with 20 gallons of water and a box of canned goods. Smuggled upstairs after the crisis by junior to listen to James Brown after school, hidden under a pillow while he toiled with algebra. Good times. RIP JB.
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Anyone that says a radio isn't a time machine doesn't get it. If you look closely you can see the Conelrad markers, and a melted upper right corner damaged by WN9BCR's first soldering iron! |
But back to the story. The nice thing about ham radio is that you can turn the simplest mission into an abyss. Geronimo!
Why all this fixation with carrying antennas? In half a century of portable ops, I remember fondly where things went smoothly, where set up and tear down time was minimal, and where I concentrated on operating. And I remember less fondly trips with tangled, broken and awkward antennas.
So how to haul your portable antenna. A topic of great philosophical debate. The EFHW in the tree guys have it easy - bag it, or just secure it, toss it in the pack, and go.
But travel with beams, verticals and masts. Things may or may not fit in a bag. Those things, if not contained, can find their way to a Rubik's cube of arrangement with everything else in your bag.
You can strap your goodies to the outside of your pack, harnessing them with various combinations of paracord, water bottle holders and cinch straps. But you risk catching every random branch you pass.
So if you're anal retentive, you need to bag it.
I joined the later school early on. The bagging school that is. I'd already graduated from anal retentive school with honors, as this blog proves.
A 1983 trip to Hawaii demanded ham radio. I decided to take a Hustler antenna system with my IC-701. As I panick packed, I selected the only antenna bag I could find. A genuine simulated leather and sheepskin pool cue bag.
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Papa's first antenna bag.... |
I stumbled across this blast from the past last year while cleaning the garage. Hustler mast, cut into short sections to fit in a pool cue bag, and resonators, 10-40 meters. Finished my KH6 WAC on 20 meters at sunrise by working an OH station from the summit (parking lot) of Haleakala. ("Finish-ed it" I swear I didn't intend that as a pun....) The first of many great portable radio memories.
This bag traveled for years in the trunk of my car, and in suitcases bound for exotic and less exotic destinations. You could do worse.
This bag worked well with Hustlers, with many variants of taller home-made AT-271 verticals, and finally with Buddisticks.
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The homebrew AT-271 antenna first bagged in the pool cue case for ZF2SC ops in 2001. 10 through 30 meters. The simplest and cheapest portable vertical I have used. |
But small QRP rigs brought on more backpack and foreign travel. And relatively small shack-in-a-box radios like the FT-817 and commercially available beams like the Arrow antenna made portable sat ops possible. The final straw was the advent of nice portable masts, which enabled ops where there were no trees.
The pool cue case, its vinyl and fake sheepskin materials starting to melt before my eyes after almost 50 years, would need to be replaced.
Along the way I sampled a few shortened ski bags and a tripod bag or two trying for extra length and girth. Not bad otions if you intend to carry a bag by a handle or in the car. But none of these satisfied my need for one, universally-useful, backpack-friendly antenna bag for a Buddistick Pro, my SOTABeams Tactical 7000hds mast and an Arrow 2 meter/70 cm beam.
Length was an issue. The disassembled Arrow requires about two feet to accommodate its split boom.
The Buddistick Pro requires some serious width to accommodate its broken-down tripod legs - three bundles of five one foot long legs - and to fit the Versa-Hub.
And the Tactical 7000hds mast is almost two feet long, wide, and heavy.
My first thought was to explore the world of military surplus. EBay can be a source of cheap useful, almost useful, and let's face it, some pretty useless stuff. I headed straight there.
Three cheap, plentiful items caught my eye. The first was a waist pack, and the other two were bespoke antenna bags.
The waist pack was from the MOLLE 2 system, Part Number 8465-01-524-7263. It is widely available. And it is cheap, as little as $8 shipped for a used bag, and $12 shipped for a new one!
This bag is about 15 inches long. If you look at the load out picture above, you can see that it can hold quite a bit of gear.
In the picture below, the load out of a Buddistick Pro system is in the bag. A big plus for this bag is its two compression straps. These straps cinch tight to keep the bag's contents from shifting - a blessing when hiking or otherwise carrying the bag around.
The bag includes a stowable waist belt. The belt can be used to carry the bag as a waist pack, or as a sling, as the belt is generously long. There will be a detailed post explaining the versatility of this bag shortly.
The two big down sides for this bag - it can just barely stow a 17 inch AT-271, and there are no attachment points for adding the bag to the side of a pack. The first point is no problem if you are only hauling a Buddistick Pro system if you have the 12 inch long mast sections. But it's no help for my SOTABeams mast or an Arrow.
No attachment points means you need to sling- or waist- carry the bag, or you must modify the bag to lash it to a pack. I've waist-carried this bag while wearing a pack, and it's quite comfortable. Sling mode is good for short distances too. Adding PALS webbing is easily done because the bag opens wide for manual sewing with a sewing awl, or machine sewing. More on bag modifications like this is coming in another post.
But there did not seem to be a way to modify the bag for longer objects. It might be all you need, but borrowing from Jaws, I was "going to need a bigger boat."
Two other bespoke military radio/antenna bags popped up repeatedly. Both are an unfortunate green color. But I'll take function over color any day if it gets the job done.
Both bags are available under 20 bucks new from more than one vendor. Prices can vary widely so shop around. I ordered both.
The first bag hails from the old PRC-25 days. The designation on the bag is CW-503/PRC-25. Again, just long enough to fit an AT-271 whip at 17 inches. So a standard 12 inch mast section Buddistick, or one with an AT-271 extended whip, fits, but not the Arrow or the 7000 hdi mast. Nor an original Buddipole shock cord whip - the black one to the left of the bag. You can do it if you don't mind a few inches sticking out of the top, of course, but the mission is to avoid that.
Internally, the bag has both a short and long pocket, making it to easy stash long, skinny stuff separately from coils, radials and other package components.
Sadly, this bag uses an old style of clips to attach to other bags or belts. There are ways to adapt this bag to the recent PALS/MOLLE standard. Cheap kluges work. But it's a bit of work and coin to do it the right way.......
Still, if all you need to carry is a Buddistick system, or if your antenna components are 17 inches long or less when retracted, this bag might work for you.
The second antenna bag is Harris Part Number 12041-1595-01. Again the bag is about 17 inches long. The main compartment of the bag is bigger, at about 6 by 4 by 17 inches, The main compartment has one very small inside dump pocket, and a second side pocket, running the entire length of the bag, ideal for whip storage.
A separate exterior pocket begins at the bottom of the bag and extends about 10 inches toward the top of the bag, with a cross section of about 3 by 4 inches.
For the money I really like the Harris bag. It will hold tons of stuff, and they are typically new and inexpensive.
And as you can see from the picture of its back side, the bag is fully PALS/MOLLE compatible and ready to attach to your similarly equipped bag. If you're not familiar with this MOLLE/PALS thing, a primer is coming.
But again, this bag is too short for the longer shock cord Buddiwhips, the Arrow, or the SOTABeam mast. Sadly, as much as I hoped these might solve my problem, these bags simply confirmed I needed that "bigger boat."
I'm done shopping. While it may require learning to sew (OMG), in Part 2, I am going to build the bag I want, and perhaps, something useful to you as well.
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