Homebrew 80m 3.5MHz antennas for amateur ham radio

The K4JPE/R Vertical

The goal, One Anten
na, 10 Bands, 10 - 12 - 15 - 17 - 20 - 30 - 40 - 60 - 80 - 160 Meter.
Upon initial testing, very good results.

HB9ABX RoomCap Antenna

Yet another new, revolutionary design which allows the construction of small
HF antennas which provide the same efficiency as large antennas.

(Maybe but probably not !!! - G6KIZ)

This antenna can be built for all HF bands, from 10 to 80 m.

A Stealthy HF Coat Hanger Antenna

No, this is not about some cute antenna that's about the size of an oatmeal box and runs at 100% efficiency from 160 all the way up to 10 meters (and 6 meters if you leave the oats). In fact, there's nothing new on this page. It's just about a very common HF antenna that I recently built.

First an eyes check. Do you see an antenna in this picture?

9 band vertical HF antenna

Simple vertical radiator with a not so simple matching box. No traps, no tuner required.

A six-band, HF Windom antenna

This Windom antenna was marketed in the late 70's and early 80's as Smithe's Windom.
It was designed to cover 80, 40, 20 15, and 10 meters. By serendipity, it also covers the 17
and 2 meter bands.

10-80m MOBILE HF MULTIBAND ANTENNA PROJECT

This is
a combination center and top loaded multiband antenna. It gets a good boost in efficiency from the
capacity hat which, unlike the commercial bugcatcher antennas, is located where it should be: as high as
practical on the whip. The low profile of the capacity hat lets it cut through the wind while still remaining
effective. This is the largest diameter hat which can withstand highway speeds without using a stiffer whip.

Band switching is accomplished by moving the jumper plug to different tap points on the coil. You have
to stop, get out, and manually change the tap.

THE DOUBLE BAZOOKA ANTENNA

The Double Bazooka Dipole is a very efficient single band antenna which is very quiet and does not require the use of a balun. This antenna consists of coax (RG58) or other 50 ohm type with the shield split at the center and the feedline attached to the open ends.

Loop Antenna Dimensions

The purpose of the calculator is to give you a quick overview of the feasibility of "squeezing" a loop into your available yard or apartment space. The calculator yields a reasonable approximation of dimensions, to within 5% over the amateur bands, using typical wire gauges ranging from #12-18 AWG. (It does not calculate inductance, impedance, or even "Q" factor values since it is assumed that tuning will be accomplished using open feeds an
d a transmatching device, which should more than adequately compensate for the range of construction and materials variations as measured by these parameters.)

The GRASSWIRE another approach to hidden HF antennas

Deed restrictions got you down? Neighbors intimidating your tower plans? Need a really easy portable HF antenna? Then the grasswire may be the answer! Virtually invisible, lightweight, and compact (you can carry o
ne in your hip pocket), this antenna works! It has been used by K3MT in various installations for more than 10 years.

Read on - and listen to the "experts" telling you that this is hogwash, that an antenna like this can't work. But it does. And true experts, who have taken a decade or more to come to grips with the intricasies of Maxwell's Math, know why it works.

Skywire Loop Antenna

In we ham radio operators' continual quest for the perfect antenna system, we try some strange things at times, but often, the simplest is also the best. That is certainly the case with the basic "loop" antenna, an often misunderstood critter, but one that gives absolutely the most for each foot of wire of any antenna I have had occasion to play with.

First, let me reassure you that such an antenna does not necessarily take much room. One reason I went to one in the first place is because I didn't have room for a 260-foot-long dipole for 160 and I wanted to give the "top band" a try for the first time in my 45 years of being a ham. If you are talking 75 meters (and up if you
want a multi-band antenna...more later on that), it's only about 65 feet on a side in a square arrangement

Australian Broadband Dipole 2MHz o 30MHz with no ATU

A dipole can be modified by inserting resistive loading networks so as to produce standing waves between the feedpoint and the networks. The authors have, by adjustment of the networks and the dipole sections, developed a travelling wave dipole whose VSWR is less than 2:1 from 3 to 15 MHz and does not exceed 2.6 to 1 from 2.3 to at least 30 MHz.

160-10M Sturba Curtain

This design will work all bands from Top Band to 10M using a tuner.

Quickie Vertical KQ6RH

Here I am sitting in front of the rig listening to everyone working CQ World Wide, and I don't really have time for this, but I hear a few interesting stations on 20 meters and try to call them. Trying to bust the pile up with 100 watts and my hustler dipole is going to be difficult on this band, so I tune up on 15 meters and there is action, and I have a good wire beam, so I tune up and down the band and can't find a clear frequency. Then I hear some one say that 10 meters is open. So I tune up there, and there is a world of DX coming in. I choose a few interesting ones to call, but can't be heard. I should have expected that, as my antenna for this band
leaves much to be desired.

I start thinking about a better vertical....

Eight Bands On One Coax - The Windom Antenna

Requirements for my new antenna were simple: It had to have as many bands as possible on one coax. It had to be something I could BUILD myself (even though I'm getting really lazy in my old age, I still can't force myself to BUY a wire antenna - if I get to the point where the only option left is to buy wires from Gordon West, then I think it's time to hang up ham radio forever). It had to fit in my back yard (140 feet wide at the widest point and full of nasty short scrub oak trees).

FULL WAVE LOOP ANTENNA

Are you looking for an inexpensive wire antenna that makes possible HF operation on all bands 10M through to 80M with wide bandwidth? This Delta Loop is a threesided antenna suspended high in the air by vertical supports such as tall evergreen trees. Recommended height is 40 feet or more at highest point but higher is better. It's one feed line eliminates the need for multiple antennas to cover the HF bands.

Short dipoles and verticals from DJ9RB

Basic design details for a number of different antennas from 160m to 40m

THE $4 SPECIAL by Joe Tyburczy W1GFH

Now at this point, some of you may be looking at the diagram and muttering, "Jeez Joe, that'
s just a dipole fed with twinlead and used with a tuner". Well of course it is. Virtually all antennas are "di-poles" (i.e. "two sides") in some form or another. This one just happens to be made from low-cost materials.

I won't go into the theory here, but trust me: balanced feedline, properly used, does not "leak" RF and is less lossy than coax. I've tried the commercial 450-ohm ladder line, but prefer 300-ohm TV twinlead, and the cheaper the better. Radio Shack TV twinlead is ideal. Home Depot has some good stuff, too. Forget all the obsessive junk about standing waves, impedance and velocity factor. What you really need to concentrate on is getting an interesting set of antenna insulators.

W5DXP No-Tuner, All-HF-Band, Horizontal, Center-Fed Antenna

The No-Tuner, All-HF-Band, Horizontal, Center-Fed Antenna is our old friend, the 80 meter halfwave dipole dressed up a bit. By varying the length of the 450 ohm ladder-line feeding the antenna, we can achieve an SWR of less than 2:1 on all frequencies on all HF bands with the exception of the lowest part of 80m. On 75m, we are feeding the antenna with a half-wavelength of ladder-line. On 40m, we are feeding it with 3/4 wa
velength of ladder-line.

6-Band HF Center-Loaded Off-Center-Fed Dipole

The goal that I set out was to design an HF antenna, with a VSWR of 3:1 or less over the full bandwidth of as many amateur radio HF bands as possible, with a preference for the low- and the non-WARC bands. This design goal has been achived with a new kind of antenna;

The $4 Special Antenna

Sure, you can find "all-band wire antennas" for sale in the back pages of Ham magazines costing $150 or more. But beware
: Marconi spins in his grave every time a ham buys an aerial instead of building it. The plain and simple truth is that wire antennas for the HF bands were intended to be hand-made and not store-bought.

Untold generations of intrepid Radio Hams have fashioned their own equipment out of spit and bailing wire. Do you think the spark-gap dudes of the 1920's just went out and bought ready-built G5RV's from HRO or AES? No way! They slapped together aerials out of bedsprings, chewing gum, and frozen cow poop. For them, every day was Field Day. I think that home-built antennas should be awarded 10 db of "honorary gain" simply by virtue of their ingenuity. And in this world of microprocessor controlled micro-rigs, constructing one may be your only chance to build something and actually see it work on the air. Think about it.

Double-L Antenna For 80/160

A popular misconception about vertical antennas for the low bands is that they must have elaborate ground systems. Here’s a vertical antenna for 80 and 160, fed wit
h a single feed line that is simple, effective, and requires no ground system. You won’t beat the 4-squares, but you will hold your own against a grounded quarter wave with ridiculous amounts of copper in the ground.

N3OX "Stealth" Multiband Vertical

I traded lawn mowing for antenna permission at the house I'm renting now, but since I don't own the place, I'm not able to install big, heavy, or very permanent antennas. Despite the practical restrictions, I wanted to have a vertical for 40m and 80m as we slide down to the sunspot minimum. This is what I came up with, and got 60m and 30m essentially for free.

80/40m Vertical +160M at a push..!!

I have always admired the Butternut vertical antennae. They are very well built using good quality doorknob capacitors and nice airwound lowloss coils. Having had an HF2 for a while I decided to see if I could make a homebrew improved..?? version.

A Multiband Vertical

I have to thank Con, DF4SA, of Spiderbeam for giving me the opportunity to inexpensively try their new 18m telescoping pole. I turned it into a great 160m through 30m antenna; as a bonus it makes a good tree surrogate to hang a 15m dipole from.

DUAL LOOP - 80 AND 40 METER HF WIRE ANTENNA

The antenna is basically a full wave 80 meter loop on top and a 40 meter loop on the bottom all supported from a 64 foot center support, namely my tower. They are both fed from the center feed point with one length of 50 ohm coax. No tuner is required.

BUILD THIS MULTIBAND FAN DIPOLE FOR ALL BAND HF ANTENNA EXCITEMENT

The only construction effort necessary over a standard multi-band dipole is the fabrication of a feed block or center insulator that is about 12 inches vertically by 3 inches
wide, made of a good insulating material, such as Lucite, Bakelite, fiberglass, or PVC.

Antennae for the Low Bands..80 and 160m

On the higher bands the same antenna is usually used for both TX and RX . The Low Bands are different in that one good TX antenna is probably adequate. If the TX antenna is relatively inefficient we can compensate by using more power. But for RX we require antennae that have the very best signaltonoise ratio (SNR) that we can muster. It is also very advantageous if these antennae are directional. Sensitivity in the RX antenna is not really that important so long as the SNR is excellent.....A good low noise amplifier (preamp/LNA) can give us all the sensitivity that we need.

G5RV Multi-Band Antenna by Louis Varney,

THE G5RV ANTENNA, with its special feeder arrangement, is a multiband centre-fed antenna capable of very efficient operation on all hf bands from 3.5 to 28mhz, specifically designed
with dimensions which allow it to be installed in gardens which accommodate a reasonably-straight run of about 102ft (31.1m) for the "flat-top". However, because the most useful radiation from a horizontal or inverted-V resonant antenna takes place from the center two-thirds of its total length, up to one-sixth of this total length at each end of the antenna may be dropped vertically, semi-vertically, or bent at some convenient angle to the main body of the antenna without significant loss of effective radiation efficiency.

80m & 40m DUAL BAND HOMEBREW 2 EL SHORT BOOM YAGI

The VE6WZ QTH is a small city lot so achieving gain on 80m has been difficult. Good DX results have been experienced using the Force1
2 EF180B 80m rotatable dipole at 100' so it was decided to design a 2 el 80m yagi around similar elements. The VE6WZ yagi design uses high Q mostly air core loading coils instead of the linear loading on the 68’ elements. Because of dimensional constraints at the VE6WZ city QTH a 28’ short boom reflector design was built with the 2 el 40m yagi sharing the same boom.

Mike Villard's Magic Anti-Jamming antenna for shortwave reception

Here's a neat little antenna for
receiving on shortwave - that is, HF - frequencies. It's the brainchild of Mike (aka Dr. O. G.) Villard, Professor Emeritus of Stanford, founding father of SRI Inc, and one of the most wonderful colleagues with which it has been my sheer pleasure to be associated.

THE CLOUD WARMER NVIS BEAM

AIM FOR THE CLOUDS AND GET BETTER "LOCAL" SIGNALS! AN NVIS STYLE "BEAM" ANTENNA FOR BETTER "LOCAL" AREA COVERAGE ON HF

Some of you may recognize
this design as nothing more than a half wave dipole, but upon closer examination, you will see that there is a reflector at the bottom of the antenna spaced at about .15 wavelength or less from the driven, (dipole), element. This in fact, makes this antenna a 2 element wire "beam" aimed straight up at the clouds! Hence the name "Cloud Warmer Beam". NVIS style antennas work best below about 8mhz as confirmed by the U.S. military.

KE4UYP TopFed 1/4 Wave Linear Loaded Vertical For 80 and 160M

This is a vertically and horizontally polari
zed antenna the Linear loaded 1/4 wave length vertical radiator introduces very little loss. The over all radiation efficiency is high at 80% to 85%. Enhancing this vertical radiator is the 1/4 wavelength horzontally polarized radiator (counterpoise) Located at the feedpoint and note it is at the top of the antenna giving you an almost totally omnidirectional pattern of high wave angle horzontally polarized Radiation.

Gain=1DBi
300khz bandwidth under 2:1 SWR on 80m
100khz bandwidth under 2:1 SWR on 160m

You will be quite amazed with how well this antenna works on either 80 or 160 meters.

W2IK's BASIC NVIS ANTENNA KIT

NVIS is one key to sucessful HF emergency communications when you need to make reliable shortrange contacts. This type of antenna if designed and deployed properly will not create skip zones. This makes it ideal for 40 or 80 meter emergency work. The RF pattern will resemble a half grapefruit with reliab
le signal coverage 400 or so miles in every direction.

Feeding a G5RV

The essence of a G5RV is a dipole that is 3λ/2 long at 14.15MHz, fed by a λ/2 balanced line "matching" section (approx 520 Ω Zo) and an arbitrary length of coax or low Zo balanced line to a tuner. Varney's articles suggest that an inverted-v configuration of the dipole legs is acceptable, though he recommends the included angle should be greater than 120°. (Varney did also describe a configuration using only open wire line of approx 520 Ω Zo, but that configuration is not nearly as popular as the high Zo / low Zo combination.)

Super Linear - Loaded Inverted V

How do you fit a full length 160 meter antenna into a 40 foot deep yard?
Install the KGØZP Super Linear-Loaded Inverted V, of course!
This design can also be scaled to work at 80m and 40m

80m Short Dipole

The best antenna is the simple Dipole. If you have height, you even can put up a quarter wave vertical or an inverted L. Both of these antennas need some form of radials for reasonable performance. But, including my self, most of us do not have enough space for 132 feet full size 3.5Mhz dipole, or space for few 66 feet radials.

THE LATTIN 5 BAND ANTENNA

This antenna should be considered EXPERIMENTAL! Most builders who have atte
mpted to build it, report difficulties! More research by builders is needed on it's proper design!

The antenna was named for W4JRW who invented it and holds a patent on the basic principle and uses quarter wave stubs, which act as insulators at the frequency for which they are cut. For example, the 6'11" stub (quarter wave times the velocity factor 0.8 of the feed line used) blocks RF for 28 mhz from reaching the rest of the antenna.

An Attic Coaxial-Cable Trap Dipole for 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and 80 Meters

A coaxial-cable trap dipole antenna installed in the attic provides a surprisingly effective solution to HF operation on the 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and 80 meter amateur bands.

Wire Antenna for 75 and 80 Meters

This article is about a wire antenna that covers the entire 3.5 to 4.0 MHz band with an SWR below 2:1. It is a two wire logcel
l of the Pyramidal Antenna a log periodic antenna discussed in the accompanying article [1]. The antenna consists of two coupled dipoles one resonant at about 3.5 MHz and one resonant at about 4 MHz resulting in the low SWR.

The Kite and Balloon Antenna Site

Kite and balloon lifted antennas for Top Band and higher from YB5AQB (Plus YI9CC and 9M2/G4VGO)

The NJQRP Squirt (from the ARRL)

This reduced size 80meter antenna is designed for small building plots and portable use. It’s a fine companion for the Warbler PSK31 transceiver.

Although the Squirt was conceived with 80meter operation in mind it can double as a multiband antenna as well.

Battle Creek Special

Trapped wire vertical for 40m 80m and 160m

Antenna Engineering - Manufactures High Performance Amateur Radio Antennas

Antenna Engineering specialise in producing a range of high quality aluminium HF verticals ranging from
mono band single element verticals to multi element phased arrays. We are committed to working with
our customers and can manufacture bespoke antennas to their particular requirements. We are also
able to supply a comprehensive range of hardwar
e & accessories.

Our Online Store details our range of products, most available for next-day delivery within the UK, and
for purchase for international customers. Our insured delivery service offers complete peace of mind.
Collection can be arranged by prior appointment.

For full details of our new product releases, upcoming events, demonstration antennas & more please
take a look around our website & Antenna Engineering Blog. We enjoy hearing from our customers, both
for general or specific questions, or other feedback.

QRP 80 Metre Slinky Dipole

The purpose of the 80 metre slinky dipole is to allow operation on that band with a loft antenna and the design is adapted from the various offerings to be found online. Each arm of the dipole consists of two slinkies soldered together.

Reduced Size Broad Elevation Verticals

Here is a radical new design for wire vertical antennas. These two designs are true selfcontained verticals that are reduced size but still have high performance. My RSBEV's (Reduced Size Broad Elevation Verticals) have an unusually broad elevation pattern this improves short range communication quite dramatically for example by top hat version covers from 9.2 degrees to 60 degrees minus 3 dB that is a total range of 50.8 degrees.

80/160m Small Receiving Loop

I live in an apartment complex with 980 units, all of which are outputting som
e electrical noise. This makes copy on the low bands very hard. A small receiving loop helps; it has very deep nulls and makes listening on 80 and 160 more pleasant.

160m and 80m Coaxial Receiving Loops

W7AE built the first loop for 160m following plans laid out in the ARRL Antenna Handbook. Encouraged by the results I built one for 80m. I found that with a proper preamp such the Palomar series or Ameco's PT3 there was a significant lowering of noise but the signals that I was unable to hear on my sloper now were quite workable using the receiving loop. For the past several years we experimented with several different configurations including a circular and
square loop. We found that the diamond configuration worked the best. The 80m version requires a preamp to bring the signal up to an acceptable quality.

KE4UYP TopFed 3/4 Wave Linear Loaded Vertical For 80M

This is a vertically polarized Phased array. The left Vertical wire is 180 degrees out of phase with the middle and right Vertical wire. At 1/6 wavelength spacing from the right Vertical wire to the left Vertical wire it is producing a EndFire Bidirectional Pattern that developes a Gain of 5.9dBi.

In addition Enhancing this Phased array is th
e 1/4 wavelength horzontally polarized radiator (counterpoise) Located at the feedpoint an note it is at the top of the array giving you a almost Totally Omnidirectional pattern of high wave angle horzontally polarized Radiation.

All of this and it is working at 95% efficiency.
And a 300khz bandwidth under 2:1 SWR.

Homebrew 2 el yagi

Shortened 2 element yagi for 80m