Antenna
so, what type of antenna do you use?.
where did you buy it?
if you made it,
- where did you get the parts from ?.
where did you get the design from?.
Antenna
Forum
» Forums / General Discussion
» Antenna
Hi Peter,
Here I only use simple dipoles. I made my own baluns. I use two inverted vees. One for 80m and the other for 40m. I have a vertical for 6m, which also tunes quite well over most of the HF bands.
73 & 73 de Michael VK2CCW
Michael VK2CCW
When I first started in radio with my novice licence, I was restricted on HF to 80, 15 and 10m (if I recall correctly). At first, I tried using a commercially made G5RV. That wasn’t very successful for a number of reasons. Then I tried a homebrew dipole for 15m. I used copper wire for the elements and a 1:1 balun fed with RG213 coax. I made my first DX contacts into Japan with that antenna and I fell in love with 15m!
I also wanted to use 80m, but after the failed experiments with the G5RV, I decided that a vertical was the way to go. I pestered my parents to buy me a Butternut HF6V for Christmas in 2000. I remember putting it together on Boxing Day and after that I spent most of my radio time on 80m. My brother’s bedroom was nearest to the antenna and he could always tell when I was on-air because his stereo system would be overdriven by RF!
Fast forward to now… I use an inverted vee fed with 300 ohm ladder line. The antenna is 100 feet long and tunes all bands, some better than others! The centre support is a Spiderbeam squid pole which has been in service for just over 10 years now. Being a telescoping fibreglass pole, it used to collapse in strong winds and part of it broke in a storm. To prevent it from collapsing, I installed small self-tapping screws in each of the joins and it has been faultless ever since.
For portable operations, I use a dipole for 40m with a feedline of RG174 coax. It has a 1:1 balun which was made from a kit produced by SOTABEAMS in the UK. I recently bought an MFJ-2286 telescopic HF whip for $100(US) from DX Engineering. It is 17 feet long when fully extended and collapses to 27 inches. It comes with a loading coil for use on 40m. I’m looking forward to trying it out on-air soon.
I run a fan Inverted Vee covering 10, 20, 30, 40, 80m with apex approx 10m fed via ugly balun (about 20 turns RG58 on 100mm PVC pipe). 80m is achieved with loading coils attached to the 40m legs. All bands are resonant < 1.5:1 so no tuner required.
All metal parts are stainless, legs are 2.5mm black (keeps xyl happy) building wire with egg insulators on each leg end, tied down with 3mm rope to convenient shrubs, fence, etc.
Apex suspended with a gal TV antenna J pole bolted to the pergola.
It's been up for a number of years now with no problems, last modification at Christmas time 2016 was the addition of 30m legs.
73
David
VK2JDR
/forum/t-2100249/antenna#post-