Since it's a SteppIR, the "matching" issue isn't a big one.. you just adjust to wherever you get a decent match.

As others pointed out, with one radial, it's basically a V dipole on its side. It won't be particularly directional.  Depending on the height above ground it may or may not be inefficient.

However, it will work.

Why is low gain antenna and more RF power "poor practice"?  Either you have the EIRP to close the link or you don't.  One might have a personal preference for "efficiency" or have a regulatory limit (the 50W limit on 70cm in many areas of the US) which forces you to a high gain antenna and low Tx power.  But those are more "preference" than "good practice". 

It's all a matter of system engineering.  You can spend money and complexity on a gain antenna and pointing, or you can spend it on RF power amps.  If you wanted to do satellite mobile, you'd probably go with the low gain antenna and the RF power: the complexity of pointing on a moving platform is substantial.

(no discussion here about downlink/Rx side performance.. There's not as much room for "buying performance" when it comes to LNAs. 2 dB difference from good to not so good is about the range.)

Why FM at all?  Go with something simple and proven, like BPSK. If I were building it, I would start with BPSK using a fairly fast PN spreading code (say, 1-10 Mchip/second), and then modulate my low rate data on top of that.  There's a lot of off the shelf hardware/software to acquire the PN codes (e.g. GPS receivers do it), and that makes it a lot easier on frequency control (which is challenging with Doppler and all).  The Space Network (TDRS) uses a similar scheme with spreading codes at about 3 Mchip/second.

There's a project going on now at JPL to build a deep space cube sat (INSPIRE). The radio design is adaptable to ham bands, and fits in <1U, and should work with ground stations in the <10 meter class.  It's using standard CCSDS modulation schemes and is DSN compatible.  Since the core of the radio is a FPGA, implementing some other modulation scheme is a matter of writing the software.

There's an off the shelf implementation for the Space Network modulations, including the PN spread modes, that fits in a 3 million gate Virtex II available from NASA Glenn Research Center. (if you're a US Person.. export control is always an issue, even for hams).
Not necessarily copy what NASA does.  Remember that legacy support is important to NASA, and a lot of what NASA does is based on decisions made on the basis of hardware that was available a long time ago. We just stay with it because it works, not necessarily because it is what you would find best if you were starting today.

Funny you should ask... This is the kind of thing that folks at JPL figure out every day.  We send several Mbps  (which would be enough for Netflix) back from Mars from MRO.. about 100W into a 3 meter antenna at 8.45 GHz.  This gives about 66 dBW EIRP (4 Megawatts).
http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-168/168F.pdfgives some measurements for Ka-band (32 GHz).. about 70 dBW EIRP, using a smaller amplifier

The multimegabit rate is into a 34m antenna on the ground, I believe, although it might be the 70m  (1:4 difference rates between the two).

Going the other way, from ground to earth, is easier. The noise figure on the spacecraft isn't as good as the cryogenic receiver on the ground, but it's easy to get 10s of kW transmitter power on the ground.   So, at least at Mars, streaming Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube to the astronauts is not a problem. (except perhaps for licensing and region restrictions<grin>)

Now, I will grant you that a 34 meter antenna is a big bigger than the average ham might have in their backyard, but there are people who have big antennas (Jamesburg dish, Bochum, etc.)  and there are a LOT of 6-20 meter dishes around which could easily be pressed into service for, say, kilobits/second.

actually, more like 1 second. Moon is about 300,000 km away and speed of light is about 300,000 km/sec.


Rough numbers.. Mars is 1.5AU from sun, we're 1 AU. If you recall, it takes a bit more than 8 minutes for light from the sun to get to Earth.  So when Mars is closest (0.5 AU) it takes 4 minutes, when Mars is farthest (2.5 AU) it takes 20 minutes.

not too hard from a technical standpoint..
The problem is that once you get very far away (the moon is 1 second away), you want to probably move towards a more "messaging" rather than "conversing" mode. 
 
Easier than EME.. EME is a two way path with 1/r^4 loss.  Of course, once you get to twice as far as the moon, you're matching EME.  While you can have W5UN's array on the ground, you don't get that on your spacecraft, so...

You want to go higher in frequency for a variety of reasons.   Today, with readily available components and such, the 10.5 GHz band is a sweet spot. Parts are still inexpensive, test gear isn't all that pricey since it's <18GHz.  A 1-2 meter antenna gives you a lot of gain at 10 GHz, and is still "pointable".

There's a fairly active amateur DSN community that regularly receives signals from spacecraft at lunar distances.

You left out the voltage in your power computation..

100 A * 240V = 24kW /household...   

100k households is then 2400 MW.

There is an assumption, though, that not everyone draws full power at the same time. Typical practice in my neighborhood is that a 50-100kVA transformer feeds 6-8 houses, or about 10 kW/house.  The local powerco engineer comments that we're a bit undersized. In the summer, there is definite light blink when the neighbor's AC starts up.

Unless you're very concerned about weight, I wouldn't go as small as AWG30.. it's tiny, it kinks, etc.  I'd look for some very flexible insulated wire in the AWG 26 sort of range.  There's wire that has lots of little strands and a insulation jacket that is very "limp" so it tends to just lay down nicely in a portable situation.

Stripping open old "silver satin" 4 wire phone cable might be a source. 

EZNEC and 4nec2 are the two places to start.  A limited version of EZNEC comes with ARRL antenna book, and 4nec2 can be downloaded from the author's website (just moved to new website at http://www.qrz.com/4nec2 ).

Both of these have reasonably user friendly front ends to the underlying NEC2 modeling engine.

Since the Flex can operate as a wideband scanning receiver, I think they might have to go through the FCC Part 15 authorization process.  Possibly, because the hardware is bandlimited to a low enough frequency, they might not need to, since they could show that it can't receive cellular frequencies.    The FCC grant for the IC7000, for instance, has a bunch of stuff verifying that it cannot be modified to receive cellular frequencies, nor can you use a harmonic or image to receive them. So it's not just a free pass if you say "Part 97 use only"


There are rules about "offering for sale" of uncertified/authorized equipment, but I haven't kept up on the latest manifestations.

If there aren't volunteers, I would think that's a de facto vote of the membership that they don't want a Hamfest...

For a lot of people, the club is a social opportunity, not necessarily a place or venue to get things done.

And, one should bear in mind that even with the best intentions, modern life gets in the way of doing things.  Clubs with a long history point back to their newsletters and say "back in the day we did X". 

But perhaps that was back in a day with different employer time commitments, etc.

As a practical matter, the Jet Propulsion Lab club (W6VIO) was quite active 20-30 years ago, but that was when JPL sponsored a variety of employee clubs and even had something called the "Employee Recreation Center".  Today, the ERC is no more, most of the clubs have withered away or changed their orientations, and the ham club is similar. Life has changed. Employers have changed.

The internet is a huge factor.. Back in the day, if you were looking for information about some piece of gear, or looking for a place to buy it, your local club was a valuable resource: someone had the databook in their garage, or knew someone. Local lore about decent surplus places, hamfests, and selling junk from your garage was a part of the story.   Today, though, I'll bet I could get any arbitrary question answered more quickly by posting it on eham, or googling for it, than asking the guys at the local club.

Maybe, but the ham world is very small. The number of people who can develop for the platform is small. It's not like an Android or iOS device, where you can get what's needed for development (the phone and dev kit) for fairly cheap.

The previous Flex radios had published source code with minimal documentation, but there were maybe half a dozen people doing things (other than within Flex).   There was a fair amount activity with things to drive the CAT interface, but that's not really an API.
Not necessarily. I don't know anything about their current internal software development practices, but in the past,that's not how they worked. They had a couple folks who provided the DSP core (dttsp) which had a DLL style interface. Then they had some folks doing UI in VC to call the DSP.
At no point did flex ever publish any design or interface documentation, other than for the CAT interface, which essentially emulates the serial port style interface for conventional rigs. Their answer was "look at the code", but the code doesn't really have many comments in it. You have to reverse engineer it.
Actually, I don't think most hams care if the API is published.  It's something that some fraction (maybe 10%) say they would like to have, but an even smaller percentage would actually use it.

And the costs to provide adequate API documentation, example code, test cases, and user support are enormous.  For an internal only team, your documentation is "ask Bob in the next office" when the API call returns something weird.

The other aspect is that the API is likely to only be for "display and UI" type functionality.  If you're expecting to get into the signal processing, that's even less likely. It's harder to design a good API for this, and Flex has some legitimate concerns about keeping the FCC happy.

I would wait to see that API implemented, running, and documented before leaping in. There's a very small population of customers who actually would use it, so it's more likely that development effort will focus on the non-API parts of the software, and on new features for the 95% of users, before features like an API for the 5%.

In Southern California, about 15 years ago (and I suspect it hasn't really changed), you could call the temporary fixtures folks  (like Andy Gump) who supply fencing, porta-potties, etc. One of the things they do is install temporary electrical services, which can be anything from 4x4" posts to full on utility poles.  While their primary business is rentals and temporary installs, they can do a permanent install, subject to permitting, etc., and are happy to sell you old inventory (i.e. used poles).

Aside from that, it's the "case of beverage" or "spare cash to the foreman" approach, but that requires knowing someone, being in the right place at the right time, etc. And these days, everyone is worried about liability. I know someone who got some poles from the local cable TV company when they pulled out their training poles and put new ones in, but the poles were cut into short lengths (i.e. they worked fine as planter boundaries and the like, but you couldn't use them as a "pole")

you will generally NOT be able to get used poles from the utility company.. They're too worried about liability and things.  AFter all, they're pulling the pole because it's reached end of life or is unsafe, and the last they want is your widow and heirs suing them because that pole failed.  Or, because the creosote or arsenic leached out. Or, because you used it in a bonfire and triggered an asthma attack. Or, PCBs leaked from the pole transformer into the pole,  etc.etc.etc.  yes, these are all unlikely, but from their standpoint, the time to deal with the potential downside risk is vastly more expensive than shredding and disposing of them as hazmat.

Sigh...

I've done a fair amount of work with high energy pulsed power and high voltage. While I can't say I've spent my entire professional career of 30 years doing it, I've probably broken, fused, vaporized, or blown up more copper and aluminum wire with high energy pulses than most of the people on this forum.

I've also got a decent background in physics and am familiar with most of the literature in the lightning effects and damage field including a wide variety of industrial and government specifications for lightning protection, which are NOT always entirely laws of physics based. As pointed out earlier, economic considerations come in to formulating recommendations: do you want to load 5 different kinds of cable on the truck or one? What's the relative price of labor and copper wire? What is easiest/fastest to connect to on a construction site? Are there government subsidies or taxes or regulatory compliance aspects? 

I can substantiate all of my statements with experimental evidence and/or analysis.  I would point you, again, to the work of E.B. Rosa at the NBS, who spent quite a while working out all the inductance formulas and then testing them against real life.  I think you'll have to agree that the inductance formulas aren't going to have changed in the last 100 years.

If you want to provide advice that is contrary to what's in the code, you need to be able to provide a basis for that recommendation.