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Base My homemade dipole, success, but,,,,,,,,,

TruckerKevin

KD9NTD
Nov 9, 2017
234
142
53
58
Buckner, Illinois
www.qrz.com
hi, this is my second time of making a dipole antenna and this one is a success.

It’s made out of some spare RG8U. I had it 18 feet in length and then I trimmed off 1 inch at a time on each end until I got to 1.5 on channel one, and 1.5 on channel 40.

I was afraid to go further. Is this about what I should expect? It’s about 10 feet off the ground on a pole temporarily. I’m going to climb a 36 foot tower and put it in the top tomorrow. By sliding it in the z and then using U bolts to Clamp it down. I know that’s probably not the best method in the world with the metal around it but it’s my only choice if I want to get it up high

My goal was to make an inverted V but this PVC pipe is pretty flimsy as you can see in the picture it’s already sloping pretty good. Should I just leave it alone and not mess with it anymore? I can take a heat gun to it and make it slope downward a little bit more if I need to
 

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1.5 swr is fine. If you try to get it lower the resonant point won't be on 11 meters. The pvc should be fine for a while. You might look into abs pipe. I don't think it will droop as much. Using a u bolt will have very little effect on the antenna.
 
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I have a sweet 16 I was hoping to use with it, I swing to about 1100 when I drive it with a 100watt kicker.

I thought I remembered reading on this form somewhere that you don’t want them to be over 1.3 . Who knows maybe I’ll get lucky and they will drop a little bit when I get it up in the air tomorrow
 
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well,,,,,,,., problems. Big ones.

I left it horizontal because I read that was better for DX. I already have a Maco V5000 above it.

I got it 37 feet up, slid it in the tower z bar and zip tied it.

My SWR are an ungodly 2.6 on 1 and 1.7 on 40.

I guess this is unacceptable and I’m going to have to do something. Does anyone have any ideas?

I mean, higher on 1 indicates the antenna is too long, but I have to be pretty damn close to being the correct length for 11 meter. I’m not sure what to do next
 
Last edited:
well,,,,,,,., problems. Big ones.

I left it horizontal because I read that was better for DX. I already have a Maco V5000 above it.

I got it 37 feet up, slid it in the tower z bar and zip tied it.

My SWR are an ungodly 2.6 on 1 and 1.7 on 40.

I guess this is unacceptable and I’m going to have to do something. Does anyone have any ideas?

I mean, higher on 1 indicates the antenna is too long, but I have to be pretty damn close to being the correct length for 11 meter. I’m not sure what to do next

Higher swr on ch 1 than ch 40 means it's too short. As you go up in frequency the wavelength gets shorter.

Is it right up against the tower? That may be the problem if it is. You need some type of bracket to get the dipole legs away from the tower. Add a loop of rope to that bracket and you can pull the antenna up like you were raising a flag. It will make fine tuning a lot easier..... never mind the flag pole idea....i just looked at the picture.
 
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Yup, I slid it right in the tower so it was teetering then used a zip tie to hold it down.

I guess I need to afro engineer a doohickey like you just mentioned.

Dammit man. I worked up some unknown courage to climb that bastard now i gots to do it over
 
10-4.

That picture you looked at is just a 10 foot pole that this was temporarily mounted to. The antenna in the background is just an old Shakespeare antenna that performs poorly. My actual tower isn’t pictured.

I can remake this whole thing if I need to. I literally spent an hour making this yesterday out of spare parts that I have lying around and it costed me nothing but 2 monsters and a coffee
 
Kevin: Yep! running it thru the tower will most certainly affect.
It is now coupling with the tower.
You need like a piece of thick wall PVC like 2" diameter to stand that away from the tower at least 3-4 ft.
Or like Dallas said, a stand off with a pulley rigged up to raise and lower it.
Another consideration, if the mount is not secure between the stand off and antenna it's going to spin with the wind and change thing as it moves towards the tower and so forth.tower stand off.jpg
So you may need a small rope at one end to secure it to tree/roof etc. to keep it from spinning.

HF-Feedlines.jpg

Great your trying and building some new antennas. Once you have a working stand-off/pulley system (maybe even 2) you'll have the ability to change things at will (like tower above) then you can have different set-ups that maybe favor different directions and be able to switch between them depending on band conditions.
Have fun!
All the Best
Gary
 

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