Of Washi Tape and Half Wave Dipoles

Washi tape has been protecting the connections on the back yard ham radio half wave dipole for the last few weeks, and I'm a little stunned.

Noticing that one of the POTA antenna setups had started to look a litttle grungy a few weeks back, I resolved to do tape wraps on all antenna connections moving forward. I didn't have electrical tape the last time I worked on the backyard dipole, so I'd used washi tape instead because I had it, and why not combine my two niche interests, ham radio, and stationery?

It turned out to have been a good choice. When I hauled the antenna in for a connector switch this morning, (having nothing to do with the washi tape, and everything to do with low-balling my BNC barrel budget, more on that later), I discovered that the washi tape had become a very hard to remove shell that had protected the wires quite nicely. Consequently, after changing out the male BNC to banana connector for a female—ridding the antenna of the need for a barrel connector—I the two connections right back up in washi tape.

Here's a little more info on washi tape from our semi-local purveyor of stationery, JetPens. First, washi tape's history:

Since it started out as an industrial use tape, maybe I shouldn't have been as surprised at it's performance on the antenna???

And here's an entire playlist on washi tape:

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