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40m Dipole HF Antenna

My main HF antenna is a 40 meter dipole fed with open wire from a balanced line tuner orientated north and south. The feed-line is made from the same 14 gauge wire as the antenna. I used quarter inch plastic irrigation tubing for the feed-line spreaders. The antenna tunes up on all bands from 40 meters to 6 meters.


160m Dipole HF Antenna

My other HF antenna is a 160 meter dipole fed with 450 ohm ladder from a balanced line tuner orientated east and west. Between the two dipoles I can cover all the HF bands in all four directions. The antenna tunes up on all bands from 160 meters to 6 meters. I use an MFJ-974HB balanced line tuner and an MFJ-259B antenna analyzer to tune up both HF dipoles.



Portable 2m/70cm Beam Antenna

While out in the field photographing wildlife my light weight camera tripod's top connection busted off. Normally I would have done some cussing but right away I saw potential for the busted camera tripod. I have an Elk 2m/70cm beam antenna and I could see it sitting on top of the tripod for field work.

When I got back home I took a hack saw and cut off the top part of the tripod stem. A piece of 3/4 inch PVC tubing fit right over the shaft for a perfect fit. After a few more pieces of PCV tubing and some nuts and bolts the portable field beam antenna was finished. Since then I have replaced the original nuts with wing nuts to make setting up and tearing down quicker.

There really isn't any point in describing my field test results. Most ham radio operators would know that a beam antenna for their HT will out perform the stock rubber ducky antenna. I will say at 6,000 feet on a mountain top I made quite a few contacts and was hitting repeaters over 150 miles away on 2.5 watts.
More photographs of my | Portable Beam Antenna | in action.


2m and 70cm's
For 2 meters and 70cm's my main base antenna is a Diamond dual band X510 40 feet in the air at the base.


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