We’re having an extension built and I had to clear out one of the sheds. In there I found a pair of mobile antennas that are probably 30 years old. Both came from Sandpiper Aerials (or was it Sandpiper Antennas) who were located in S. Wales. Both antennas got lots of use in the past till I got a car without gutters and could no longer easily mount mobile antennas. Into the shed they went and managed to survive a house move.
Now I have a little VNA here so I could set them up and play with the VNA to “tune” them back when fitted to the car. But I thought why not just ask Sandpiper if they still have the instructions. That’s when I hit a snag. It looks like Sandpiper closed down in 2021.
Now I remember the guy running Sandpiper was licenced and called Mark but that’s it. So it’s always worth asking the SOTA hive-mind if anyone can remember who ran Sandpiper and if they have any contact info? Or maybe unlike me, they kept the instructions to their Sandpiper mobile antenna and it’s the same as mine. Well if you don’t ask you wont find out!
It’s possible someone knows and then I can email Mark and he can tell me it was 30+ years ago and no he doesn’t have the designs! Or maybe he’ll say sure and a PDF or two will turn up.
One is a dual 5/8 colinear for 70cm and the other is a dual band 2m/70cm, a 5/8 for 2m and dual 5/8 colinear for 70cm.
Yup, that’s because they ceased trading 2 years before.
The list of names fits what is crystallising in my memory. When I started there was an older guy at the rallies and younger guy. The old guy was the father and he was the ham and Marc was his son who obviously took over. I’ll have a look and see if those addresses are business addresses, maybe solicitors or domestic addresses.
I can’t find any manuals for VHF/UHF aerials from Sandpiper online but it looks like they also produced some HF verticals.
Do you have the model numbers Andy, that might find a scanned version of the instruction sheet online.
