160 Meter Dipole

I have always wanted to get on 160 and now live where I have an acre of space to do it!' (although I will have to string it through the trees)

My question is the following: Where can I buy a GOOD QUALITY 160 meter dipole? I am looking for something with rugged construction and won't break during the first ice storm.

Your input is appreciated.

I have had this antenna up for about 8 years now. They are built very well with good quality components.

Buckmaster OCF Dipole Antenna

I have the 132' for 80 and up. I use this as a backup/shortwave antenna.

The reviews are here.

Buckmaster 7 Band, 3KW, OCF Dipole Antenna Product Reviews

My main antenna is a 250' dipole fed with ladderline to a Palstar autotuner.

Regards,
Bob

Buy?? What is that word?

You have been around for a while so why not just put "160 meter dipole plans" in a Google search. There are lots plans available. Just make it as sturdy as you can.

I have some space too (8 acres), but I have horse fencing, a barn, and horses all over the place. So it's difficult to find a place to put something up that is clear of all the obstructions. They already took apart the elevated radials from my 5BTV.

Martin - K7MEM
www.k7mem.com
www.theshiftyjackranch.com

I would also suggest making your own dipole for 160, all you really need is some wire and a few insulators. For high strength I would use #13 Poly-Stealth wire from Davis RF and you can get black UV resistant insulators on Ebay cheap. You could also use a 1:1 current balun as the center insulator but it may not do much for you.

If you fed the antenna with balanced line to a tuner it would cover the entire band with little or no degradation and there is a lot of band to cover. You can also feed it with coax but you would want to tune the dipole in the region you want to operate and it may not work so well across the entire band with a tuner due to addational loss the coax will incur operating into a high VSWR.

You can make an offset center fed like the huge Buxcom that was suggested, it just needs a 4:1 current balun placed in the appropriate spot and it will also work many other bands with a good match and maybe without a tuner on the higher bands. Just try to get the antenna up as high as possible. A 1/4 wavelength on 160 is about 125ft and a horizontal dipole on this band up 20ft might as well be laying on the ground.

I was playing with an offset center fed 160 dipole just last week in the CA desert where I had room to experiment. The apex was only up 25ft with the ends about 3ft off the ground and it didn't work so well. I also have a 43ft vertical with lots of radials and a tuner at the base on a remote rig near Boston and it seems to work better on 160 than the very low dipole I used last week.

In discussing antennas with some of the 160 folks it seems a 1/4 wave inverted L 25 to 50 ft high and the remaining wire horizontal over lots of ground wire is popular and effective and it operates more like a vertical with a capacity hat.

Anyway, get out there and experiment. You can get some very cheap electric fence wire and make a test dipole to see how it works then if your satisfied you can make one out of better components to survive your weather.
prcguy

Make it yourself.. for a few bucks you can do it. There is nothing to it at all.

Where to buy a 160 Meter dipole? Lowes or Home Depot.

Wire, insulators, rope, add in some coax or ladder line and you're good to go!

Loop

If you've got the room for a 160 meter dipole, give some thought to putting up a full wavelength loop instead. It will give you omnidirectional coverage, and you can tune it well to the higher bands.

You can build one, and have fun doing it. Buying antennas isn't my idea of having fun. All you need is 260 feet of wire, insulators, some coax and some means of connecting the coax to the wire and rope. A 1:1 balun would be a good investment, attach 130 feet of wire to each side, slip the wire ends through the insulators and find a good tree to hang the center and trees to hang the ends. It doesn't have to be straight and pretty, just get it as high as you can and enjoy.

I've bought a few 500 foot rolls of THHN insulated wire and still have plenty left over for other antenna projects.

One thing to think about is most copper wire (think of the kind sold at Lowe's or Home Depot) are standard "soft" copper and will stretch from just the weight of the wire (let alone the added weight from that ice storm), which will both weaken the antenna and change the tuning. A better solution would be some wire made from copper coated steel (aka copperweld) which will be much stronger and have less chance for stretching or breaking when the wind blows those tree branches around. When new (basically when the copper is still shiny) it's just as easy to solder and use as standard wire (although due to the extra strength, it is a bit more difficult to cut, but normal wire cutters will still work if more effort is used).

https://www.thewireman.com/antennap.html

Any wire less than 200 feet long and under 100 ft high will be essentially omni directional on 160m.

Q: does it have to be a dipole? Why not just a 'wire' (I don't want to start the whole "long wire" vs "random wire" argument) and feed it with ladder line? Use it on all bands.

SouthOrRadio said:

...My main antenna is a 250' dipole fed with ladderline to a Palstar autotuner.

Click to expand...

Same here... bought the parts as a kit from DX Engineering, cut the wire elements to the prescribed length (and the 300-ohm feedline to 60.1 feet), put it up and it is good to go - cheap, simple, strong, and works great.

Wyandotte said:

If you've got the room for a 160 meter dipole, give some thought to putting up a full wavelength loop instead. It will give you omnidirectional coverage, and you can tune it well to the higher bands.

Click to expand...

That's what I would suggest too. I put a 160m full-wave sky loop at about 75 feet and it works pretty good. I had a dipole for awhile but the background noise is considerably lower with the sky loop than it was with the dipole, and I can hear stations with the sky loop that aren't copyable with the dipole.

The downside to the sky loop is that it works good on 160 and 80 meters. At 40 meters and higher, even though the tuner can get a good match the sky loop acts more like a dummy load than an antenna. My loop antenna is 544 feet long and fed with 86 feet of homemade ladder line.