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Wire Antennas
For those with a limited budget, no room for a tower, or those that just
want to build their own, a simple wire antenna is a good project.
The only antennas I ever had before 2006 were wires of one kind or another.
There are times when I would like to have a beam on a tower, and one day I will have.
But for now I have a lot of fun with the wires. There are six basic types of wire antennas
that I have used.
The first was a simple long wire that was routed up through a tree just
outside the window and then run through the tops of several other trees until I
had around 250 feet of wire up in the air. The general idea was to get as much
wire as high in the air as possible. It worked OK using an antenna tuner between
the radio and the antenna, but there were problems. On some bands I had problems
with RF in the shack. If you've never been hit with RF take my word for it, it
doesn't feel good. Even when I was only running about 50 watts it was possible
to get a rather painful burn. So I decided that something had to be done.
The second antenna was a large loop, actually a large rectangle. I used the
same wire as the long wire above, just added a down leg on the far end and added
the bottom side about 6 to 10 feet off the ground to bring it back to the shack.
The total length was around 250 feet long by 50 feet high for a total of about 600 ft.
This antenna did a very good job for a number of years. The only problem with this much wire
running through trees is wind. Over four years or so I had to patch breaks
several times. Still I used this same piece of wire for close to 5 years.
Recently I went to Lowes and bought a 500 ft roll of #14 wire for about $50.00.
Can't beat that price!
Another antenna that is easy to make with wire is the dipole. At this time I
have a dipole with elements cut for 20/40 meters. I still use an antenna tuner
to use this antenna on other bands like 17 and 15 meters. It seems to work
fairly good, but I haven't used it much yet. I use coax with this antenna.
A different type of dipole is the folded dipole. This antenna is basically
like a regular dipole, but it has a second wire that goes from one end of the
antenna to the other. I have used folded dipoles on several bands and they work
very well considering how simple they are to make. I got the formula for the
lengths from an edition of the ARRL Antenna book, but they are probably
available from most antenna books. When I get the time I will post the formulas
here. One thing that got me interested in folded dipoles is that you can make
them from the 300 ohm TV lead wire. A folded dipole is about a 300 ohm load and
this matches up nicely with the 300 ohm lead wire. Nice and simple and the
material is readily available at low cost.
A couple years ago I installed an 80 meter Delta Loop, think big triangle.
The delta loop works well on all bands from 80 meters to 10 meters, using an antenna tuner.
It will not load up for me on 160 meters.
During a DX operation a couple years ago I had worked the group on nearly all the bands that had
propagation. The one notable exception was 160 meters. I didn't have an antenna for 160 meters, and
my 80 meter delta loop just refused to tune up on 160m. Since I had a lot of antenna wire laying around
I decided to make a quickie wire vertical for 160 meter. I cut the vertical wire to a quarter wavelength,
attached one side of the twin lead feedline to that and attached the other side to the radial
system for the 5BVT. It seemed to work pretty good and I did get the station I was after. Since
then I have worked around 50 DXCC entities on 160 meters, without spending a lot of time specifically
chasing entities there. The antenna works well into Europe in the early morning hours their time.
During one of the contest I heard an amazing opening at 1:30 am East Coast time, or 06:30 UTC.
It just goes to show you don't have to have an elaborate antenna to work 160 meters.
These are all the wire antennas I have ever used. They work well for the cost and
labor involved. If you have a couple tall trees spaced just right you already
have the supports. Using the TV lead wire makes for a light weight antenna
system that is easy to pull up into the trees using a variety of methods.
Personally I use a fishing spinning reel and a 1 ounce weight, throw the weight
across the tree limb, take the weight off and hook a small twine to the end and reel
it in. Other people use a bow and arrow or slingshot to get the line over the
limb. I guess it's personal preference, but I like the spinning reel. Once my
neighbor's young son asked me what I was doing after seeing me throw the
weight up in a tree. Just as straight faced as I could I told him I was bird
fishing. He didn't quite know what to do with that one. After a minute or two I
did tell him the truth about it.