• You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.

Zero-Five 24 Foot Vertical


I have the 10-40 ground plane and it does really well. Tom has a great reputation for
his designs. I've talked to a couple over the air that had the stealth like you're looking at in HOA and loved them.
They're pricey but very well made and you get great support.
There's others out there, check around. If you do go with the ZeroFive you won't be disappointed. Just my .02
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Anything can be made resonant, and any input impedance can be matched to the rest of the system to make an antenna usable. The key word in that is 'usable'. That does not mean it will work 'well', just that it will be usable. Shortening an antenna from a typical 1/4 wave length means that it's performance will also be 'shortened', when compared to a 1/4 wave length vertical antenna (same for a 1/2 wave, 5/8 wave, any particular 'size'). It's really as simple as that.
If that reduced performance is 'good enough' for you then have at it. But don't think that it's the 'best' there is by any means. It can certainly be the 'best' that you can expect/get considering your particular mounting/living circumstances, but that's completely different than 'best there is'.
As for the prices? I don't think you want to know what I think about them...
- 'Doc
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 people
Any vertical without ground radials is only half an antenna.

I have tried the Cushcraft R7, it worked, but so did my 1/4 wl 40 meter vert with ground radials, the 1/4 wl with ground radials hands down much better than the cushcraft.

If you can get a 32' flag pole up, (chain link fence posts comes to mind here, cheap and easy to work with from the home supply stores, or electrical emt conduit).

Bury some ground radials, 16 or 24 of them. bury them in the grass, I used 24 gauge green insulated solid copper wire, (had a 5000' roll of it).

It works great on 40 and has out performed the other commercial made verticals on the other bands.

If you are going to just use 100 watts then a automatic tuner at the input, in an environmental sealed enclosure or some tuners are even designed for exposure to weather marine type automatic tuners.

a unun at the feed point and put the rest of the money you save in your pocket compared to the zero five price.
 
Last edited:
Zerofive Antennas

Most of the ZEROFIVE ANTENNAS are non resonant vertical antenna that work well for DX, first of all being non resonant they don't bring in extraneous band noise, you get a lot better signal to noise radio in less than ideal radio conditions, (you can hear the other stations better) Thats better than trying to take noise away from the signal with a DSP unit that always adds something to the incoming signal, fact is a signal will always come over the noise in radio reception, an antenna tuner will have to be used for a decent signal output of the radio used. I have a ZEROFIVE 43' that I have been using for 3 years in two different configurations with good results on 10-160m. My first setup was the way ZEROFIVE recommends installing the 43 vertical using a full range tuner and using a UNUN and a coil on the 43' vertical antenna this worked well up to 200 watts at my location, but after 200 watts the efficiency dropped. the present setup uses a screwdriver antenna in series with the 43' stinger and 3500' of radiales that range from 18-60' under the antenna, the antenna system will take 1000+ watts with 1.1 SWR which works very well on 160, 80 and 40m with fair results on the upper bands.
By taking off 5 section of the vertical stinger and making the stinger 27' that made the antenna a flame thrower on 40m it still works 80 an 160m. I just ordered the 27' Zerofive ground plane antenna that works 10-40 with an antenna tuner, for the higher bands to take advantage of the higher Sun Spot count for some good DX..........KB6HRT:)
 
"Most of the ZEROFIVE ANTENNAS are non resonant vertical antenna that work well for DX, first of all being non resonant they don't bring in extraneous band noise, you get a lot better signal to noise radio in less than ideal radio conditions, (you can hear the other stations better)"

i thought a resonate antenna was best . i also thought DX/skip performance was a terrible way to judge a antennas performance since it's all about conditions .

thanks for correcting the bad information i picked up along the way . (y)
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Booty M',
Go get the 'bad' information out of the trash. It isn't bad information at all, it's about as good as it gets. You also 'lower the noise floor' by using a rubber duck antenna! Sure, less noise, but also fewer signals 'cuz you just can't hear them, they're buried in that 'noise floor'.
A shortened antenna (for any particular frequency) isn't a "natural" resonant length, but by using a tuner at the feed point of those shortened antennas, you CAN make them resonant. Sort of like the coil used to resonate a 5/8 antenna, part of it's a loading coil, and part is a matching device. As was alluded to with the example of using a screwdriver 'loading coil' with that "ZeroFive" antenna. "But there are losses when using a loading coil", yep there sure are. But less losses from making that antenna resonant and radiating all that get's to that antenna. The 'catch' to that is the resulting radiation pattern from that shortened antenna doesn't put that radiated signal where a full sized antenna's radiation pattern would put it. (Field density at particular points.)
Think about it...
- 'Doc
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Most of the ZEROFIVE ANTENNAS are non resonant vertical antenna that work well for DX, first of all being non resonant they don't bring in extraneous band noise, you get a lot better signal to noise radio in less than ideal radio conditions, (you can hear the other stations better) Thats better than trying to take noise away from the signal with a DSP unit that always adds something to the incoming signal, fact is a signal will always come over the noise in radio reception, an antenna tuner will have to be used for a decent signal output of the radio used. I have a ZEROFIVE 43' that I have been using for 3 years in two different configurations with good results on 10-160m. My first setup was the way ZEROFIVE recommends installing the 43 vertical using a full range tuner and using a UNUN and a coil on the 43' vertical antenna this worked well up to 200 watts at my location, but after 200 watts the efficiency dropped. the present setup uses a screwdriver antenna in series with the 43' stinger and 3500' of radiales that range from 18-60' under the antenna, the antenna system will take 1000+ watts with 1.1 SWR which works very well on 160, 80 and 40m with fair results on the upper bands.
By taking off 5 section of the vertical stinger and making the stinger 27' that made the antenna a flame thrower on 40m it still works 80 an 160m. I just ordered the 27' Zerofive ground plane antenna that works 10-40 with an antenna tuner, for the higher bands to take advantage of the higher Sun Spot count for some good DX..........KB6HRT:)

With 3500 feet of ground radials a wet noodle will work for an antenna(y) Congrats on your ground.

An inverted L will work better than that Zero five vertical with that much ground radials.

Verticals are noisy, nothing to dispute there, non resonant verticals do not lower the ground noise, that is myth. Any antenna that has a low gain to it will look like it lowers the ground noise, but it also lowers the receive signal.

Booty you take DOC's advice and get that info back out of the garbage.

43 foot vertical works to 160 meters? I guess it could if you are radiating your feed line. 1/16 of a wl how efficient do you think that would be?

Not picking your post apart, just pointing out the discrepancies between a myth of a zero five vertical and what is actual antenna theory.

The zero five, is well constructed and will stand some fierce weather, but for all purposes it is just a piece of aluminum nothing more nothing less. Same thing can be built from Home Depot EMT conduit and will work just as well and save the op a lot of $$.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Booty M',
Go get the 'bad' information out of the trash. It isn't bad information at all, it's about as good as it gets. ........

i know old Crotchety Old Bastard , i was just being a poopy head (y)
 
I don't care what any antenna seller says,................ a short verticle on the low bands SUX!!!


why do you think the low band mobile hf antennas have a BIG loading coil/cap hat?????

same concept applies for an HF fixed station
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
Zerofive Antennas

Generally speaking all good antenna systems have be optimized to get the results wanted, an compared to a reference antenna to make sure you get the results wanted. Your criteria for an antenna will always be somewhat different than others because of environment differences and needs all differ. My best tool for getting the results wanted is A/B testing, which takes time to check all aspics of the system you put together. This is the part of this hobby that intrigues me the most...........KB6HRT :D
 
With 3500 feet of ground radials a wet noodle will work for an antenna(y) Congrats on your ground.

There's actually a point of diminishing returns for ground radials. I think optimum is somewhere between 45 and 60 radials. Don't remember the exact number and I don't feel like looking it up!

I used a home brew single band 20 meter vert with 45 radials and it was amazing how well it worked for DX. Never could justify spending hundreds of dollars on a commercially made vert when I could make one from an 18' crappie pole and wire. It looked good and was low profile too.
 

dxChat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • dxBot:
    Tucker442 has left the room.
  • @ BJ radionut:
    LIVE 10:00 AM EST :cool:
  • @ Charles Edwards:
    I'm looking for factory settings 1 through 59 for a AT 5555 n2 or AT500 M2 I only wrote down half the values feel like a idiot I need help will be appreciated