Last weekend I’ve done some work on my multi band open dipole. Seems that the wires for 40m, 20m and 10m where all too long. That way the antenna was not resonant inside those bands but lower.
So last weekend I went on the roof with a cutting tool. After a few hours tweaking the results where promising. 40 and 10 where resonant inside the band! Made a nice QSO with Rick, G8KSM on 40m. Beautiful signal and Rick told me mine was too. But 20m still wasn’t resonant inside the band. So I went up again.
Then for the third time, the wire for 40m broke. Grrrmbl! Replaced the wire, but then the whole thing went fubar. Nothing was resonant anywhere…
A little frustrated I ripped everything off the roof and placed my good old single open dipole for 20m up. First I gotta figure out a good firm construction for this mulit band dipole. I’ve got some ideas already. Will post an update on this issue soon!
Category: Antenna’s
Skywire loop antenna
Some time ago I was reading about an full wave loop antenna. I was interested in this antenna right away. Since the preparation for the full radio exam I was told that full size antenna’s always outperform half wave or quarter wave antenna’s. The only problem is the space you need to make such an antenna operational.
Well, over here in the Hautes Alpes there is space enough! So I already bought some fishing rods earlier. A few days back I assembled the fullwave loop antenna for 40 meters. I placed the rods in a square with 10 meters between each rod. Put a wire in between and hooked it up to my TS-50. Immediately I noticed the difference between an open dipole (as setup in earlier article) and this skywire loop. It is much, much more quit on all bands, therefore I can pickup so many more signals. Almost every signal is stronger on the loop then the dipole. Only a few signals are stronger on the dipole. So as I already suspected from all the reading I did on fullwave loops: they perform very well! I will think about a more permanent setup of a skywire loop over here in de Hautes Alpes.
Multiband open dipole
At my current QTH at 44.5362N, 5.9366E, JN24XM (Les Hautes Alpes, France) where I’ll stay the next week, I did want to experiment with a multiband open dipole. Therefore I assembled a lot of electric wire and some wood at home. The only thing I had to do over here was roll it out and find a place to put it up.
Although I’ve build the multiband open dipole for 4 bands (80, 40, 20 and 10m) and had to put 40 meters of wire up in the air, it is no problem to find a place for it here. The only problem is the 2 meters of snow. I had to ‘swim’ through the snow to be able to reach the trees. I can assure you my parents and girlfriend enjoyed my adventure!
After a few hours the dipole was up and running. The first contact with ON50WAASLAND on 80 meters was quickly made. This morning I’ve worked C4EURO on Cyprus on 20 meters. First impression of the dipole is good. My Kenwood AT-50 is able to tune the dipole on all HF bands except 30 meters. In spite of the very bad conditions I get pretty easy good reports. Although I think the multiband dipole is a little bit noisy.