The Flutenna

Transmitting music using amateur radio phone emission is prohibited. You studied that for your license exam: The rule is 47 CFR 97.113.¹ In contrast, transmitting using musical instruments is proper and legal. The Case Amateur Radio Club of Case Western Reserve University, W8EDU, reports here the first known flute-to-rubber-duck and flute-to-flute QSOs, or QTF.²

Quarter-wave monopole antennas are remarkably tolerant of materials and exact dimensions. The Flutenna’s centerpiece is one standard Boehm-system soprano flute (). This was “borrowed,” when she wasn’t looking, from the radio club’s principal flautist, Rachel Boedicker, AC8XY. Your radio club may have a similarly distractable principal flautist. Other components include a flute stand, a bit of adhesive copper tape, and three or four discarded bass or violoncello strings (other wire is fine, but those have just the right flexibility and harmonics harmony). The flute is the antenna’s vertical radiator, the strings are the radials, and the flute stand, with its copper-tape flute contactor, holds it all together. A drilled hole in the stand passes a coaxial