ANTENNAS


I currently have three antennas up that I use.

 

FAN DIPOLE ARRAY:

This antenna is a 40/20/17/10 meter fan dipole array. The center is up about 20 ft and the ends are supported by 22 ft pipes. The center is fed with a 1:1 balun.

fan dipoles

 

DISCONE:

discone

 

 

 

 

Another antenna is a discone made by MFJ. It has a low SWR starting about 110 MHz and continuing upward to the upper limit of my MFJ 259B antenna analyzer. It also has a center vertical whip that covers the 6-meter band but unfortunately I have no 6-meter capability at the present time. I use it for 2-meter and scanner use.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

88-FOOT NON-RESONANT DIPOLE:

 

88 footer

 

 

 

 

My latest antenna is an 88-foot non-resonant inverted-V dipole fed by 600 open line. The center is up 32 feet and the ends are supported by 24-ft poles. At my noisy location this antenna is about 2 S-units quieter than my fan array. It also responds quite well to vertically polarized signals maybe because of the inverted-v arrangement. The open line is fed from a 1:9 balun I made located in the shack.

Nov, 2014 Update: The ladder line for this dipole now runs straight down to the roof where I have the balun installed with a remote antenna tuner. The ladder line now is only about 22 ft long. Details of the remote antenna tuner are in my 'Technical Stuffs' section.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

88 footer

 

 

 

 

 

Another view of the 88-footer showing the open line over the roof. Total length of the open ladder line is about 86 feet.

It's kind of hard to see the actual antenna in these views at the top of the pole although I did try and optimize the picture exposure and contrast. There are a couple of topics related to this antenna in my technical section: (1) How I made the open line and spacers, and (2) The 1:9 balun I feed the open line with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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