I made a #HamRadio antenna that I really like, and wanted to share the design and process so others can do it too.
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I made a #HamRadio antenna that I really like, and wanted to share the design and process so others can do it too. It's a carefully-tuned linked dipole that is light and has served me well for #POTA activations. It's now in its second iteration and so far I'm very happy with it.
I haven't seen many antennas that use bullet/banana plugs for links, and I haven't seen any that use heat shrink and cord to create unstressed link points that wrap nicely. Someone must have done it, but I haven't seen it yet. This avoids the mess of alligator clips, and it's so tidy that I can cover all the bands from 6m to 40m without any mess stowing or deploying it.
- I use it for QRP, but it will support 100W "barefoot" because it's resonant.
- I tuned mine for CW, but you can tune it for near the top of each band, and add little stubs to extend it down to lower parts of that band to work lower parts of the phone space or all the way down to CW.
- I've added options for different (or no) choke and different connectors.
A compact ham radio linked dipole antenna with 3d-printed parts
I’ve been enjoying ham radio, going into parks, putting up an antenna, and contacting people at a substantial distance using very little power (“QRP”). I enjoy building antennas for this activity, and I designed one that…
Maker Forums (forum.makerforums.info)
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G gustavinobevilacqua@mastodon.cisti.org shared this topic
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@mcdanlj Cool! That looks like it would be easy pack and deploy.
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@trevorflowers Thank you!
Probably about five minutes from hanging up to stowed in my pack? A lot of the work is avoiding tangling the wires with each other. I drop the antenna, then remove the shock cord, so that it keeps the legs from tangling with each other on the ground. Then walking out to untie the ends, and make sure there are no tangles on the ground.
It is definitely slower to wrap the wires in a figure eight than to just whip them around, but it's better for the wires, so it's an investment in longevity. Probably takes me about a minute per side, and another minute for the coax loop, once I have the legs untied from whatever I tied them out to.
I'm a little slower if my hands are very cold.
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Now it's time to invent a robotic arm making this
