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The $4.00 20 meter vertical

RatsoW8

Supporting Member, W9WDX ARC Member - WD8T
Nov 3, 2009
3,100
1,411
273
West Central Michigan
I have this week off work and while cleaning the garage yesterday I found a bag of aluminum tent poles I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago. I got the bug to build a ground mounted vertical for 20m. But, I was only going to do it if I had all the stuff I needed without buying anything. Turns out I had to buy a $4 bag of ground cloth staples to anchor the radials and coax. Big deal :)

This is a super easy antenna to build and it is only an s unit or two down on US stations from my dipoles that are up at 55' and 45' . Not bad and some signals are actually better on the vertical with only 8 radials. No DX around right now but it should do pretty well.

The antenna started at 16' 6 inches and wound up a little shorter during the 5 minutes it took me to tune it with some holes I pre-drilled in two sections of tubing. I laid out 8 radials the same length and have an ugly balun (choke) at the feed point. The tapered end of the tubing fit perfectly in 1 inch pvc pipe to keep the vertical radiator insulated from ground. I soldered the radials to an 8 inch ring i made with a scrap piece of heavy ground wire.
 

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