{"id":187,"date":"2024-05-26T18:33:08","date_gmt":"2024-05-26T18:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/?p=187"},"modified":"2024-05-26T18:36:36","modified_gmt":"2024-05-26T18:36:36","slug":"new-antenna-simple-20m-horizontal-half-wave-dipole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/26\/new-antenna-simple-20m-horizontal-half-wave-dipole\/","title":{"rendered":"New Antenna: Simple 20m horizontal half-wave dipole"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I signed up at the local club to be an activator for lctota.org<\/a>, so my 2 element beam pointed at New Zealand wasn’t really ideal. I really needed an antenna that would cover as much of the U.S. as possible, so I went with a simple horizontal dipole facing East \/ West. I have a great 3rd floor balcony over a downhill slope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m using my telescoping mast to get the bulk of the antenna in the air, and started with aluminum tape over 3′ chimney brush rods for the far 1\/4 wave (coax and a common mode choke for the near 1\/4 wave). But naturally that gave me about 75 ohms impedance (rotated through my feed line), which is a little high for my amp. So I switched to meandered flat aluminum wire (1mm x 10mm). Conveniently Amazon sells it in a 16.5 ft length for about $10. The chimney brush rods have metal 1\/4″ NPT ends, which I used to make the antenna easy to disassemble. By meandering both the flat wire and the coax feed line, I got pretty close to 50 ohms on my 2nd try. I have about 200 kHz that’s under 1.4:1, which I can center anywhere in the band by pulling an extra 6″ of coax through the common mode choke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a bit of a hazard, as the telescoping mast is only secured using a 100 lb sandbag, so I take it down when not in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Horizontal fishing pole dipole<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Oops, it looks like the duct tape holding up the coax failed in one spot, so it’s a little droopy. I’ll have to fix that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I signed up at the local club to be an activator for lctota.org, so my 2 element beam pointed at New Zealand wasn’t really ideal. I really needed an antenna that would cover as much of the U.S. as possible, so I went with a simple horizontal dipole facing East \/ West. I have a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/191"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ai7sg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}