Homebrew wire antennas for amateur ham radio

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?

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.

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.)

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.

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).

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.

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.

Ladder Line 2 Meter J-Pole

Easy and cheap to build wire J Pole. Low SWR and can handle 50 watts

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.

The RXO unitenna

Wide band vertical antenna for 40 to 15 meters band

St. Louis Vertical

The St. Louis Vertical (SLV) About 51' of twinlead is coiled on the 4' bottom section of a 20 collapsible fiberglass fishing pole. An additional 16' of twinlead in the clear serves as a vertical radiator.

Offers portable enthusiasts an easytobuild easytouse antenna which covers 1040M via a balanced line tuner and installs independently of external supports (trees are not required)

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.

3 HALF WAVE LENGTH HORIZONTAL VEE

The short vee beam described has a reasonable omnidirectional pattern with a maximum directivity in a line that bisects the angle between the legs. Good low-angle radiation is obtained when a horizontal antenna has a one wavelength height above ground. Below .5 wavelengths give marginal performance. For lower heights (.5 wavelengths and less), some improvement in low angle propagation can be had by tilting the leg ends below the center feed point. This will help improve DX but at the expense of the omni pattern not being as good and will increase the vertical pattern more skyward at a higher angle.

The LA1IC COAX-FED SLOPING LONGWIRE

Simple, inexpensive and easy to erect, this antenna provides directivity, low angle radiation and
a small gain on a number of HF bands.

Primarily designed as a point-to-point DX-radiator for 10, 12 and 15M, this antenna also does a fair job on 17, 20 and 30M. Its total length of
41 meters

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.

6 METER EDZ SIGNAL SQUIRTER

The Six Meter Extended Double Zepp is a very easy and inexpensive antenna for the 6 meter buff to build in about an hour or less and will add about 3 db to your signal from it's broadside bi-directional pattern when installed about a half wave up from the ground. You mignt call it a diplole with gain!

All of the materials used to build this antenna can be found locally or you may even have them laying around.

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.

Endfed 20/30 Mtr Antenna

I've had good luck with an endfed antenna on 20 and 30 meters. Depending on available trees/supports I can arrange this antenna as an inverted vee a sloper or a horizontal 1/2 wave.

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.)

40M Triangular Full-Wave Vertical Loop Antenna

Add the Missing Leg to that InvertedL Antenna

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

ShortyForty Dipole (centre loaded)

Each element arm is 18 Feet 6 Inches (5.029 M) long. The loading/matching coils consists of 30 turns of 12 SWG enamelled copper wire wound on 2.5 inch (63.5 mm) diameter PVC tube 6 inches (152.4 mm) long. The winding pitch should be about 6 turnsperinch (25.4 mm). Although the picture doesn't show it very well the shield of the 50 coaxial cable is connected to the center of the coil. The coax center
conductor is connected to a point 2 or 3 turns away from the center to a point which gives the lowest SWR. This point may take some experimenting depending on which section of the band you wish to operate in.

Portable Magnetic Loop Antenna for 20m, 30m, 40m

A simple multi-band magnetic loop antenna designed for 20, 30 and 40 metres, but by changing the overall length of the wire coverage of other bands is feasible.

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.

SM0DTK 40 meter Moxon

On my lot I have some pretty high trees (15 meters) which can carry wire antennas. So what antenna to hang up to get some gain to the west and to reduce signals from the east? My choice was to try a moxon wire antenna made by very thin wire to reduce weight. I started up the Moxon Rectangle Generator and calculated the dimens
ion for the antenna. Then I cut the wire according to the result from the generator and made some supports for the corners and for the feeding point by plexiglass.

40 Meter NVIS antenna

This project gives enough information to build a 40 meter Super-Gain antenna designed to help hams compete somewhat better with the foreign broadcast stations which practically take over the band in the evening and night time. It is based on the theory of super gain NVIS arrays, which reject QRM from low angles.

The final design....still under testing by many hams....is extremely simple, uncritical and offers large gain and QRM rejection.

The propagation studies and design work was done at Dusina Enterprises in Melbourne, Florida.
The antenna is described
as having approximately 9 db forward gain and an average of 15db rejection against low angle QRM. The antenna is useful up to about 200 miles radial distance from the transmitter in the daytime and up to around 1,000 miles at night.

The INVERTED 'U' ANTENNA for 200 meters and down

Do you find it hard to get on 160 meters because of the antenna? This simple wire may be just what you need. It installs easily, needs no elaborate ground system, yet performs very well. A little ingenuity solves two connundrums at once - getting the current high in the air, and lowering the current (and hence losses) in a very simple ground system.

GD7JWR Extended Double Zepp Antenna

The Zepp, short for Zeppelin is any resonant antenna end-fed by ladder line. A Double Zepp means a center-fed antenna. This extended version provides 3 db gain over a dipole. The double Zepp consists of two collinear 0.64 wave length elements fed in phase. The 1.1 balun is used to connect the 450 ohm ladder line to 50 ohm coaxial cable. The only adjustment is in trimming the 450 ohm line matching section to best SWR.

JR3TVH Light Weight VMAP (Vertical Moxon Array for Portable)

This VMAP has a below 20 degree vertical angle and more than 5dBd as the same as 2ele Yagi and F/B ratio is the greatest over 27dB because it has a null point b
ecasue it has a pattern of Cardioid. Designed his formula and checked at any places with MFJ-259B analyzer once or twice.

Construction is very simple with NO matching unit but has a sophisticated performance at the height of some feet on the reef or soils. Two fishing rod, ropes, pegs and light, thin wires for your band expected those ar just pre-installed last night for example( w/wo a 1:1 bulun.) I designed for the impedance is optimized at 50ohm without any matching unit. But some adjustment was needed at some places near the fence or blocks, some materials as common issues.

G5RV 40m Beam Antenna

Adding a 28 ft. piece of vertical wire to one end of a traditional 102 ft. centerfed G5RV dipole turns it into a 40m beam with a very wide beamwidth.

The Battle Creek Special

2 versions of the Battle Creek Special (top band vertical)

First there is a wire version. The traps are make of coax cable as describe by W1FB.

The second version is a 'real' vertical make of tubes complete with a description of the traps.

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.

SM0DTK 20 Meter Corner Fed Vertical Moxon

Vertical Moxon wi
th different feeding.

20m Delta Loop

Fed for vertical polarisation, to give a low angle of radiation for DX and also a nearly omni-directional radiation pattern.

KE4UYP RSBVE (Reduced Size Broad Elevation Verticals) For 60M Verticals

Here is a radical new design for a wire vertical antenna it is a true selfcontained vertical that is reduced size but still has high performance. At a top height of 29ft. 23/4 . A horizontal space at the top of 24ft. 91/2 and 20ft 21/2 by 26ft 21/2 at the bottom. My RSBEV's (Reduced Size Broad Elevation Verticals) have an unusually broad elevation pattern this improves short range communication quite dramatically. The elevation pattern covers from 9.8 degrees to 69.6 degrees minus 3 dB that is a total range of 59.8 degrees.

The 2 Meter Colinear J Pole Antenna

Get ready for field day, mountain topping, emergency communications, roaming or just plane ham radio fun with this portable inexpensive 2 meter J designed to fit into a small foldup space that yields about 8db gain. Support it from a non-conducting collapsible fishing pole or similar.

ON7YD Vertical antenna with inductive toploading

In an environment with a lot of 'vertical objects' (trees etc.) close to the antenna inductive toploading can significantly increase the performance of a short vertical antenna. The antenna is 14m high at the right end (where the loading coil is) and 16m high at the left end. The horizontal top section is 22m long and consists of 4 parallel wires, each 90cm separated.

Beverage Antenna

Do you have the room. For a Beverage to work well you need at least 1 wavelength of wire. On 160 meters that's 490 feet of wire in as straight a line as possible. If you have the room, 2 wavelengths works pretty nice.

Off-centre fed bent element attic yagi

This is a horizontally polarized three Element Yagi. Only 8ft. 5" wide and 7ft. 6" long and still has 6.2dbi gain and 20db front to back ratio.