Homebrew dipole?

[codeman]

I have been searching for an antenna that I could put together myself and I like the idea of this one: A Stealthy Homebrew Vertical Dipole Antenna Using Mobile CB Antennas

I will however use it outside mounted 18-20 feet high on poles I can take apart and store in the garage when I am not using it as I am renting the house.

I am thinking about mounting it horizontal instead of vertical though as I have more interest in talking Dx then local. Should this easy design work and thoughts on what to use to as a base for my antenna pole?

 

[w9cll]

That's a lot of work for nothing, go to home depot, get 50 feet of 14 gage stranded wire, a piece of pexglass and some coax. Cut two 8.5 foot wires and cut a 4"x 4" price of the plexyglass. Drill three holes in the glass, one at the middle top and two others on each sides. Feed the wires through each hole on the sides and twist to secure. Strip the end of the wire at the twist. Cut two small pieces of glass or use PVC if you have it. Drill holes in the glass/PVC and feed the other ends of the wires through those and twist to secure.

Now take your coax and strip and seperate the center conductor and the shield, attach the shield to one wire at the support and the conductor to the other. Attach a rope to the center hole and hang from a tree or whatever you have. Take the other ends and spread out and down at a 45 degree angle and attach. Run the coax to your rig and check swr, trim each one of the legs if needed. When trimimg cut both ends not just one.

This will give you a very good DX antenna and won't cost more than $20.

 

[357magnum]

I agree with W9 The wire antenna is good for DX an simple to make or you can get won on Ebay from $10 to $21.95 plus shipping but making it yourself has more gratification ! IMO

 

[Beetle]

If you don't have a center support pole or a convenient tree at/near where you want the center of the antenna, you can run it between two trees, or a pole and a tree...lots of possible configurations. The angle between the two legs isn't really critical, but shouldn't be less than 90 degrees. 120 degrees would be even better. Run the coax away from the antenna at as close to a right angle as possible to avoid common-mode current.

With a dipole, maximum current (and therefore maximum RF power) is at the center. Keep the center as high as possible. An 11 meter dipole weighs so little that this shouldn't be a problem. An 80 meter dipole, however....

 

[codeman]

Thanks for the replies. I have a wire antenna dipole already that I had bought a year or so ago and I will try to hang it up in my backyard next weekend and see how it works. I did have some success before with it but I moved and just haven't tried it out in my new location. Not really sure why not.

The main reason I like the idea of using the homebrew antenna is that I could easily go outside and turn the direction of the antenna and see how it helps or hurts performance. I am thinking of trying my wire dipole in inverted V with the top being maybe 14-15 feet high.

This is just for the fun of it as I am usually driving the semi 4-5 days a week and have made plenty of DX contacts using a Predator 10K antenna and various barefoot radios, my Magnum being my favorite until it took a dive and is now on the way for repair. My old Connex 3300 had no problem making some good contact either. In the meantime I am using a Uniden 980ssb which is ok but I am looking for something better. Thinking about getting the Yeticom Optima3, but I don't know how well it would hold up to the abuse of a rough riding semi.

 

[222DBFL]

I think the optima mk3 will handle the rough ride of a semi. They are well built inside and there aren't many components hanging around inside to get knocked loose. The worst I can say is the front knobs don't like direct hits as they are soldered to an SMT board, I know my magnum 257hp has taken a beating and still works fine. Rough riding in a work van that goes off road quite a bit. To me the optima is built better than the magnum, but the magnum has some good audio on both am and ssb. The optima is no slacker in this area either, it has clean clear audio I have been told but lacks the punch of the magnum 257hp's audio. May have something to do with the speech processor that magnum uses. Either way, I would think the optima mk3 would be fine in a semi. Get a good external l speaker for it and a good mic, I really like the icom hm-36 mic, with noise in the mobile, simply turning the mic gain back a bit makes a big difference. Doesn't pick up the background noise. Good little setup. No echo or bells and whistles, just a good working radio IMO. God bless