160 Meter Dipole, Low Hanging Losses?

[Duckford]

Looking into various antennas and ideas for 160 meters, including building a "fishing pole" style with loaded coil and wire wrapped round a PVC pipe, looking at other compromise antenna ideas that others have posted. Many seem interesting, some might be quick to put up and work as good compromise antennas.

But, before I start to chopping up wires for this and that, I was wondering just how bad are low hanging dipoles or low hanging NVIS? I've got plenty of land, so I can run a full dipole or G5RV 160 meter if I want, but not sure how I would jack it into the sky with the short trees on the property. And 80 meters in the air is a big task for a flat top.....

How high does a dipole have to be in inverted V or flat top to actually work reasonably well, or better put, how low does it go before it becomes worthless to transmit? Is a compromise vertical setup or L with ground plane a better option, or is a full length wire balanced antenna still a better option even if I can get it, say, 30 feet in the air?

Thanks in advance.

 

[kb5udf]

As a general rule a flat top/dipole should be at least 1/2 wave off the ground. Obviously, most hams have no way to do this on 160 meters since (.5 wavelength x 160 meters) = 80 meters. Thus, most operators I know that take 160 somewhat seriously use a loaded tower/vertical. While such a radiator has compromises, it should avoid being a "cloud burner" like a 160 dipole too low. From what I recall the L is another valid option, just don't have friends using it.

 

[danesgs]

I do just fine with a inverted V at 24 feet high on 80 meters. Guessing at 160 with extra wire a bit higher like 40 feet might make a big difference.

 

[prcguy]

I've played a bit with a 160m dipole with the feedpoint at about 35ft and the ends lower. It sucked, I could hear a few people but they could barely hear me. I also tried a 43ft vertical over a lot of ground radials with an auto tuner at the base. Everyone for 200mi around could hear me just fine. I also had a ZS6BKW dipole horizontal at about 25ft at the same location as the 43ft vertical and switching between the vertical and dipole was like connecting the antenna then disconnecting it. Lots of stations with the vertical, virtually none with the dipole.

My assessment is a low dipole on 160m is probably great for talking to your neighbor next door but not good for much else.

 

[popnokick]

Huh - I must just be lucky or some kind of freak of nature. I have a 160M off-center fed dipole (OCFD) that is 268 feet long and hung as a flat top at 40 feet in the air. It is fed with RG213, my Icom 7100, and an LG tuner and LDG 1:1 balun (un-un). Here is the first of 25 pages of 160M QSOs confirmed in LoTW via FT8. Granted, it is mostly North America... Europe is possible but difficult. Not shown here but I've also worked / confirmed France on 160. A bonus with the OCFD is that it not only works on 160 but also all the ham bands up through 6 meters. I've worked Ireland on 6M with it, as well as much of North America. So why does my 160 Meter antenna work most of North America and occasional Europe? 160 is of course better in the winter months. But otherwise dunno... ask the experts here I guess. Proof is in the confirmed QSOs.

 

[AK9R]

I have 160m aficionados as friends. One of them has over 200 DX entities confirmed on 160m. He uses a top loaded vertical (built using Rohn 25 tower sections) for transmit and either a Beverage-On-Ground or a rotatable loop for receive. Yeah, he's pretty serious about 160m.

 

[prcguy]

I assumed the OP was going to use voice and that will be extremely disappointing with a low dipole on 160. FT8 and similar digital modes are a different animal and if that's all the OP wants to operate this is good news. If the OP is a phone guy then the list of 160m FT8 contacts doesn't mean much as he could never achieve anything remotely close on phone.

In talking with some of the bigger stations on 160 with my vertical it seems a common antenna that performs well among the dominant stations is an inverted L 1/4 wave with the vertical portion going up a good 60 to 75ft then the remainder going sideways. I and many hams don't have the luxury of a 75ft support so a modest vertical seems to be the next best thing.

Huh - I must just be lucky or some kind of freak of nature. I have a 160M off-center fed dipole (OCFD) that is 268 feet long and hung as a flat top at 40 feet in the air. It is fed with RG213, my Icom 7100, and an LG tuner and LDG 1:1 balun (un-un). Here is the first of 25 pages of 160M QSOs confirmed in LoTW via FT8. Granted, it is mostly North America... Europe is possible but difficult. Not shown here but I've also worked / confirmed France on 160. A bonus with the OCFD is that it not only works on 160 but also all the ham bands up through 6 meters. I've worked Ireland on 6M with it, as well as much of North America. So why does my 160 Meter antenna work most of North America and occasional Europe? 160 is of course better in the winter months. But otherwise dunno... ask the experts here I guess. Proof is in the confirmed QSOs.
View attachment 107846

 

[Duckford]

Yeah, I actually want to attempt actual AM and SSB contacts, never even tried FT8 yet.

Lots of good feedback so far, lots to think about. Thanks.

 

[popnokick]

Forgot to mention ALL of those 160 Meter FT8 QSOs were on 50W or less... many of them 30W. So if you were doing "actual" (real ham radio, not the "questionable" ham digital stuff ;-) with 100W on SSB or AM... you WILL make QSOs via phone using the antenna I described. In fact, for two years running I took 1st place in the PA QSO Party using 5W SSB... and more than a dozen of those QSOs were 160M. I'm not going to apologize when I say that a long off-center dipole at least 40 feet in the air DOES work for phone QSOs on 160M. You have pick your season and time of day in that season carefully... and that is what propagation and "working it" is all about. Right now on 160M... fuhgeddaboutit... even with FT8. But wait until Oct and cold weather starts... you WILL make phone QSOs in North America... and likely beyond if you're patient. If you're an AM medium wave broadcaster... yup, you need at least one or more 100 foot towers to cover your service area. But to make ham QSOs with 100W (or more is better) and a good receiver... no towers needed.

 

[prcguy]

I've only run a little FT8 mostly on 20m and less on 40, 15 and 10m. I've made contacts to EU and other impossible locations from So Cal at less than 50w where a phone contact would have been impossible at any power level. The bands were essentially dead and FT8 punched through.

I assume the same on 160 and your list proves that but that doesn't change the fact that a 40ft high dipole on 160 is a severe handicap and phone contacts will be few and far between. When I'm playing with my remote station with 43ft vertical (which I recently shortened to about 22ft) and I switch to a horizonal dipole basically all 160 stations I can hear on the vertical disappear. I can tune the ZS6BKW to a perfect match but the combination of it being 94ft long and 25ft off the ground kills it for any use on 160.

A vertical with ground wires is so easy to put up and the performance is night and day different on 160. The vertical can also supplement a low dipole for DX and my vertical in bot 43ft and 22ft length outperforms the dipole on 40 through 20m on DX where the low dipole is great for NVIS and hears stuff a few hundred miles away that the vertical cannot. You have the best of both worlds using a low dipole and a vertical and for 160 the vertical will become your go to antenna.

Forgot to mention ALL of those 160 Meter FT8 QSOs were on 50W or less... many of them 30W. So if you were doing "actual" (real ham radio, not the "questionable" ham digital stuff ;-) with 100W on SSB or AM... you WILL make QSOs via phone using the antenna I described. In fact, for two years running I took 1st place in the PA QSO Party using 5W SSB... and more than a dozen of those QSOs were 160M. I'm not going to apologize when I say that a long off-center dipole at least 40 feet in the air DOES work for phone QSOs on 160M. You have pick your season and time of day in that season carefully... and that is what propagation and "working it" is all about. Right now on 160M... fuhgeddaboutit... even with FT8. But wait until Oct and cold weather starts... you WILL make phone QSOs in North America... and likely beyond if you're patient. If you're an AM medium wave broadcaster... yup, you need at least one or more 100 foot towers to cover your service area. But to make ham QSOs with 100W (or more is better) and a good receiver... no towers needed.

 

[popnokick]

Two antennas - a vertical and OCFD - with A / B switch is definitely the superior solution! I couldn't help but notice prcguy that you've posted elsewhere here on RR about your experience (and good experience IIRC) with off-center dipoles. Are we to assume you don't have one that you can use on 160M?

 

[alcahuete]

I don't do a lot of 160m work at all. It just isn't something that interests me. But the contacts I have made are all using a OCFD at around 100'. I have had relatively little difficulty getting to the east coast of Canada and Europe on LSB from here in SoCal. Have some FT8 and CW thrown in too for good measure.

 

[prcguy]

My main HF antenna at home is an 80m OCFD from MyAntennas and the best wire antenna I've used with respect to performance and low VSWR across the bands. I supplement that with an NA4RR Hexbeam for the higher bands. At a remote base near Boston I have a ZS6BKW and vertical that I recently shortened to 22ft tall. I have a brand new MyAntennas 80-10m resonant EFHW to replace the ZS6BKW next trip to Boston. On a remote base in Texas I have a home brew 40-10m resonant EFHW.

I have no use for a 160m OCFD because I have no way to get it high enough to be efficient on 160 and its too big to fit any property I have access to.

Two antennas - a vertical and OCFD - with A / B switch is definitely the superior solution! I couldn't help but notice prcguy that you've posted elsewhere here on RR about your experience (and good experience IIRC) with off-center dipoles. Are we to assume you don't have one that you can use on 160M?

I don't do a lot of 160m work at all. It just isn't something that interests me. But the contacts I have made are all using a OCFD at around 100'. I have had relatively little difficulty getting to the east coast of Canada and Europe on LSB from here in SoCal. Have some FT8 and CW thrown in too for good measure.

 

[jwt873]

I ran a 160 meter Buxcomm off-center fed dipole for about a year. It was 60 feet high on the short leg and drooped down to about 25 feet high at the end of the long leg. It never performed well for me. I couldn't get the SWR under 3:1 on 160. I haven't been on 160 since. I've kind of gravitated to VHF/UHF weak signal work.

A couple of friends I know use inverted L antennas on 160 and swear by them. If you have a high tree or tower handy, it might be worth trying one.

 

[Duckford]

A couple of friends I know use inverted L antennas on 160 and swear by them. If you have a high tree or tower handy, it might be worth trying one.

That's the bigger problem. I have lots of trees, but they are "shrubs" by some forest comparisons. Oak trees and others that aren't higher than 40 foot at the most. No tower to use, and not the budget or time to set one up.

Setting up a steel pipe or other pole, perhaps on the side of a large shed, I might be able to get something up 40-50 feet that way. Brace it and guy it and see what I can't pull off without going through the work of a tower.

 

[tweiss3]

I've had minor success on 160m, but don't operate there much. I used a MyAntennas 80m antenna, turned the power way down to 5 or 10 watts and ran FT8. It worked well enough, but there isn't much activity on 160m, so I never go up there the check.

 

[mtindor]

That's the bigger problem. I have lots of trees, but they are "shrubs" by some forest comparisons. Oak trees and others that aren't higher than 40 foot at the most. No tower to use, and not the budget or time to set one up.

Setting up a steel pipe or other pole, perhaps on the side of a large shed, I might be able to get something up 40-50 feet that way. Brace it and guy it and see what I can't pull off without going through the work of a tower.

Even a 40-foot high tree is enough for an inverted L. Go as vertical as you can for as long as you can, and then run the rest horizontal to an anchor point. Put down a bunch of radials and have fun. (easy for me to say, I haven't done it). But certainly if you did want on 160 and you actually wanted to work DX, an inverted L with only 40 feet vertical (and the rest horizontal the best you ccan) is still gonna get you a ton more DX than any 160m dipole will (unless you are like W8JI and have a 300 ft tower to suspend it from). You'd likely even get more DX without radials, but a ground mounted vertical requires a good radial system to be as efficient as possible.

 

[mtindor]

160m dipole at 25 ft or 40 ft + FT8 != success. As others have mentioned, you can make contacts on a "closed" band with FT8. And you still aren't going to work much DX on a 160m dipole up 40ft or less even with FT8. You might make contacts, but it's no success story for sure.

 

[prcguy]

A 1/4 wavelength inverted L will radiate mostly vertical pol since most of the RF current is closest to the feedpoint. I think it would be best if you can get at least a third of it vertical and the rest horizontal. For 160m going up 25ft then 75ft horizonal would not be ideal.