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Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Antenna contemplations

The wire from my Inverted L End Fed Zepp met its doom this past August..  I went outside after a particularly bad evening of thunderstorms to find wire hanging down on the back porch and the other end hanging down the mast that was supporting the far end.  The gusty winds caused it to fall apart somewhere in the middle.

I didn't use it much as I could never get a decent match on the antenna tuner.  For whatever reason, perhaps the truly random length of it and the lack of a decent counterpoise, it always gave my auto tuner fits and starts.

This evening (and for the past few evenings) I was following a discussion on W3EDP antennas on the Polar Bear QRP Ops mailing list.  I did a lil' Googlin' and came up with this:

http://www.qsl.net/w5rin/Projects/Antennas/ae5vv/W3EDPAntenna.pdf



I can (I think) definitely fit a 67" hunk of wire along the run that was occupied by my ill fated EFZ.  According to the .pdf, that should make operations on 80 Meters and up possible.  However, I would really like to find a way to squeeze an 85" piece of wire, in order to make operations possible on 160 Meters, too.  I know, not nearly an ideal antler for 160 - but something is better than nothing (which is what I have right now).

I have the ladder line and I have a heavy duty 4:1 balun that my friend Bob W3BBO was not using and sent me.  I have the wire and the coax is still there. I just need to cobble one of these together and get it up before the weather really turns nasty for the winter.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!

3 comments:

  1. Good morning Larry, keep us posted on the new project along with pictures.....hurry the cold weather is coming!!!
    Mike

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  2. Nick's presentation is excellent! I do a similar one, only I leave out the balun, and hook directly to tuner. I work 80m by unhooking the counterpoise and tuning directly against station ground, as a vertical, probably would get better results if I created a radial specifically for 80m. I've had trouble tuning the classic model on 30m, I solved that by changing the counterpoise length a little.
    Have fun with my favorite portable antenna design!
    Check out my adventures with the W3EDP on my ham radio masterlinks site from my blog: http://skattagun.blogspot.com/p/ham-radio-master-links.html thanks and 73!DE KG4GVL

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  3. Thanks Brandon! Read your Webpage and watched your videos. I am going to go for it; but will make a beefier version as this one will be permanent (hopefully!) in the backyard.

    Larry W2LJ

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