[BVARC] HF Antenna Advice

[Blaine Taylor]

I have just gone back into ham work since a long work assignment.  I had all
my gear on the top shelf, and my MFJ vertical was damaged by a big bird
trying to land on it.

 

I was hanging out on 40 and 20 meters, but since retiring, I hung up an end
fed half wave and am having a lot of fun on 80 meters.

 

I put up an end fed half wave 126 foot long, with a 10' "tuning tail"
hanging down from the end.  The whole thing goes through a MFJ automatic
tuner.  I love it.

 

I need to put a compensator coil in about 8 feet from the transformer end to
bring both the top and bottom ends of the bands back into register.

 

You can see the dips marking all HF bands.  The tuner catches all of the
bands very well, but I would like to bring up the 80 and 40 a bit, specially
since I use mostly 75m for the nets in the evening, and they are in the
general portion of the 80m band.

 

The advantage of this kind of antenna is that they only need feed from the
one end, and can be bent around lots of obstacles.  Dipoles are good, but
both are quite long for 80meters.

 

I have seen loading coils installed to make the 80 meter band work well with
only a horizontal distance of about 40feet and a 25foot height on the fed
end.

 

http://infotechcomms.co.uk/downloads/Multi_band_EFHW.pdf

 

Good luck with your project.

 

73's 

Blaine Taylor

 

 

 



 

From: BVARC <bvarc-bounces at bvarc.org> On Behalf Of David Mehl via BVARC
Sent: Friday, May 7, 2021 12:43 PM
To: bvarc at bvarc.org
Cc: David Mehl <dcmehl at live.com>
Subject: [BVARC] HF Antenna Advice

 

BVARC Club

 

I am a new ham and a club member since I passed my Tech last August at the
BVAC testing. I have also passed both my General and Extra exam about a
month ago. I am working on setting up a HF radio for home. I have a
'backordered' IC-7300 which may show up one day. In the mean time, I am
trying to plan for my HF antenna that will fit on my small lot.   I think I
can run an 40-20-10-6 OCFD (*MFJ-2010) in a slope from a tree in my front
yard, with the feed point hung off a mounted on chimney, and then on to a
post above my fence in my backyard. I don't have any trees in my backyard.
Instead I have power lines across the back of the lot that I have to avoid. 

 

I keep reading various comments and warnings about using a chimney for a
mount. My chimney is in good repair, having been inspected and repaired
during my home rebuilt after being flooded during Harvey. 

 

Is the center of the OCFD a light enough load to consider using my chimney
as a center mount? Is there a right way to do that? Or should I 'bite the
bullet' and setup a pole beside the chimney?

 

Any other antenna advice for a novice?

 

Thanks

 

AI5DK

David

David Mehl / Houston Texas USA /  <mailto:dcmehl at live.com> dcmehl at live.com 

 

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