20 meter center fed dipole for portable/field day work.
I don't do Field Day very often
Ham Sticks (the original ones other than the 10 meter) for HF mobile 10, 15, 20, 40 & 80 meters. 20 meters is used the most.
For 2 meter mobile
1/4 wave vertical
5/8 wave vertical
I like making my own antennas. Other than antennas for my mobile I have not purchased any.
I have made the following antennas over the years
10 meter center fed dipole. This antenna was my first HF antenna, Tech Plus let me use some of the ten meter band, and is down as well as is the 10 band at this time.
5 band fan dipole (10, 15, 20, 40, 80) This antenna was made to replace the 10 meter after I upgraded to Extra and has been disassembled to make other antennas. I used 10 and 20 meters regularly with this one. I do not recall making any 80 meter contacts on it. I should have made it as a 4 band skipping 15 meters. A lawn service I hired one summer brought this antenna down by cutting one of the guy ropes. They just balled up the wires and piled it at the support mast and left without saying a word.
40 meter center fed dipole trimmed for 7.2125 (in use).
20 meter center fed inverted vee dipole trimmed for 14.200 (in use).
40 meter Fishing Pole for portable Click here for the idea I copied. Made with a 20 ft telescoping fiberglass fishing pole. This is used with a home brew 4:1 duo coil 16 turn current balun
20 meter center fed dipole for portable/field day work.
OCF ½ wave dipole for 7.2125 MHz.
TRIpole
The TRIpole started out as the 40 meter OCFD above with the wires cut to 36% on the short leg and 64% on the long leg. It was working okay and I was able to tune it on 10, 20, 40, and 80 meters using a manual tuner, My auto tuner could not get the job done. Since I work mostly 20 and 40 meters I added both legs for 20 meter to make it into a duo band fan OCFD and it DID NOT work at all. I then disconnected the short leg of the 20 meter at the balun (4:1) and left it hanging on the support rope. The antenna appeared to work better then when I just had the 2 legs of the 40m.
Most of the time I do not use a tuner with it when working 20 meters.
When I modeled it on the computer, the TRIpole had better gain then just the OCF dipole on either band.
The long leg for 20 meters and the short leg on 40 works out to about 4/3 wave on 20 meters
During the middle of a QSO I was told that the TRIpole could not work.
Currently the TRIpole is down, but there are plans to get it back up and on the air.
203 ft longwire with a 9:1 unbalun (in use).
2 meter 1/4 wave vertical (made out of welding rods)
Hustler 5-BTV, used, new to me in May 2015. As I stated above, I have not purchased any antennas for other than mobile use. This antenna was given to me by AA3RR when he relocated from MD to AZ.
It is interesting, the different ideas that can be found online about antennas. Before I made my inverted vee I researched the concept and found many different ideas and thoughts on the design. Many of the designs were end fed and required a balun. The types of balun's were as numerous as there were designs. Center fed were not mentioned much.
Then there were the discussions about how high an inverted vee or any dipole should be. There were a lot of discussions that said unless it was 70 feet minimum at its apex the signal would not get out of the neighborhood. Okay the comments were not that bad, but there was not much good being said about center fed inverted vee's.
The apex of my inverted vee is at 30 feet, and I have worked Europe, Indonesia, Australia and Japan
This image is the Reception Report from pskreporter.info using the 20 meter inverted vee
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I have also used the 20 meter Ham Stick on top of a metal shed and worked Australia when I had no other antenna up.
I use Ham Sticks (the original ones other than the 10 meter) for HF mobile 10, 15, 20, 40 & 80 meters. 20 meters is used the most.
During a recent portable event in Alabama I used the 20 meter Ham Stick attached to my magnet mobile mount sitting on the ground with 4 32 ft wires (radials)clipped to the mobile mount.
Most of my contacts were in the North America, but I did make contact with Suriname and other country's in South America, along with multiple contacts in Europe. I was very happy with the results
For 2 meter mobile I use both 1/4 wave 5/8 wave verticals
