UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Antenna recommendation for 40 and 80M bands

Peter.N. · 13th Sep 2019, 10:35 am

I used to have a long dipole, 200', made from blue telephone wire, centre fed with twin feeder into a balun, it would tune up on any band, any that were not spot on could be made so by adjusting the length of the feeder. Unfortunately after many years it fell down back in the winter, probably been up for 20 years though. I am going to replace it but with a shorter one as I have a redundant tower that supported a wind turbine for one end.

I also have a 40m dipole made from figure 8 telephone wire, I split it to make an approximately 40m dipole and used the twin part as the feeder. I used this when on holiday in Scotland with my IC706 via a KW Easy Match balanced only ATU and it worked brilliantly, worked well on 20 and 80m with more or less zero SWR.

My original 40 and 80m antennas were home made and could easily be tuned by making them a bit long and then cutting a bit off at a time until min SWR was in the middle of the band.

Peter

13th Sep 2019, 10:35 am	#36
Peter.N. Dekatron Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Charmouth, Dorset, UK. Posts: 3,601	Re: Antenna recommendation for 40 and 80M bands I used to have a long dipole, 200', made from blue telephone wire, centre fed with twin feeder into a balun, it would tune up on any band, any that were not spot on could be made so by adjusting the length of the feeder. Unfortunately after many years it fell down back in the winter, probably been up for 20 years though. I am going to replace it but with a shorter one as I have a redundant tower that supported a wind turbine for one end. I also have a 40m dipole made from figure 8 telephone wire, I split it to make an approximately 40m dipole and used the twin part as the feeder. I used this when on holiday in Scotland with my IC706 via a KW Easy Match balanced only ATU and it worked brilliantly, worked well on 20 and 80m with more or less zero SWR. My original 40 and 80m antennas were home made and could easily be tuned by making them a bit long and then cutting a bit off at a time until min SWR was in the middle of the band. Peter