It’s possible that you’re reading this because you pointed your phone at a QR code on the outside of my back yard shed, on the wall that faces Brian Way. And because you’re wondering “why does this guy have all these wires and poles all over?” So here we go.
DX Commander Classic
Let’s start with the black 10 meter tall fiberglass pole between the Maple tree and the yellow shed. That’s a DX Commander Classic. The bottom-most aluminum plate is the ground plate, and it has about 20 wires going out in all directions, under the grass. The 2nd plate is the “driven” plate. The center conductor of the cable attaches to it, and from it a bunch of wires of different lengths extend up the pole. The shortest wire is for the 10 meter band (28MHz). The longest wire is for the 80 meter band, and this one goes about 2/3 of the way up the pole, then goes over to the top of a different pole by the NE corner of the house. This antenna allows me to use nearly all of the HF (i.e. High Frequency, aka “shortwave”) Amateur Radio bands.
APRS
OK, so the other, taller black pole – the one at the corner of the house – is carbon fiber, and is approximately 50 feet tall (15.25 meters-ish). Atop that is a white PVC thing. That is an antenna that works on 2 meters (i.e. 144MHz VHF) and 70 centimeters (i.e. 444MHz UHF). By happenstance, I’m only using it on 2 meters. APRS stands for “Automatic Packet Reporting System”. Although it can report infinite things, most hams use it for reporting their GPS position… or at least the GPS position of their radios.
I have several radios (& other devices) which report their position via APRS, but the home station with the white antenna 50 feet in the air is a Digipeater and iGate. It stands here as a public service to other hams who want to have good coverage in this area. How good? Well here’s a map that shows where various stations have sent position packets through this station to the aprs.fi database during the month of May, 2025…
What Else
A 3rd antenna mast is affixed to the eaves where the garage and house roofs almost intersect. On it there is another 2m/70cm dual band vertical (used for non-APRS things), a broadcast FM receive antenna, an HDTV receive antenna, and a WiFi Access Point (to help the robot mower not get lost behind the pine trees).
