Yesterday's Antenna Build

[Bored_Technician]

Good Morning everyone! I just wanted to share my success for anyone else out there interested in homemade dipoles.

Version 1 of my dipole was all loose wire and insulators. I had some success with it, but it was cumbersome to raise and lower. It always wanted to get tangled up and adding guy lines for the dipole ends didn't help. It was not easy to get a 45 degree inverted 'V' with this configuration. I don't have any good pics of it.

So I decided to throw the parts into some pvc. Meet Dipole Version 2.0:


The wires are held in a nice 45 degree slope and it's easy to hoist up high with no guy lines. This is a massive improvement in both ease of use and performance. I am in midwest USA and I was having fantastic skip talking results with this set up. I hit Australia, Puerto Rico, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and New York on LSB. And I had a great contact with Rhode Island on 23AM which was really cool!

I'm having so much fun with this set up. I'm going to keep experimenting with it. I may try removing the 45s and running it straight horizontal.

Thanks again for all the advice in getting me going. Have a great Memorial Day!

 

[dkcorlfla]

Looks like you might have enough room to add two legs and a vertical section. You would then have a vertical ground plane antenna. Vertical antennas tend to have a low angle of radiation and that might help get out even farther.

Looks good and your having fun, that's what really matters.