If talking about HF and not talking about 20m and 40m band then the talk is said to be incomplete. Especially in India 20m and 40m are very popular, most of the daily nets are operated on both these bands. As a beginner in ham radio.
I was regularly listing those nets and conversations on my USDX QRP set. I got the inspiration to build my first HF antenna from listening to other ham friends on USDX. Latter I bought ICOM746Pro.
Being an amateur radio license holder and do not interact with them using transmitter, gives the feelings of incompleteness. The desire to talk with them is motivating me to make this antenna today. After building an antenna, soon I am going to talk to everyone the frequency.
I had the option to buy a ready made antenna but I believe that ham radio is a hobby, the more we do things ourselves, more we learn and experience how science actually works.
I have seen the antenna of VU2JRT, VU2TPF and VU2KYZ from Surat and many ham friends from Gujarat (Specially though the whatsapp sharing) and I have tried to make an antenna accordingly.
As a VU3EFL, I always see the things that are useful for my hobby. At my factory i have found following things which can be helpful for building an antenna. Its a scrap for the factory, but not for the hobby – Its like “best from the waste”.
- Waste switch of air compressor.
- Over stocked – yarn ceramic.
I bought new SO239 connector. I plan to make a hole in metal plate using CNC machine, But latter I drill the hole using lathe machine. Using a glue ceramic attached to the plate.
Now its a time to Solder SO239 connector to this plate.
Yes, I know solder is not proper one, but latter i have done it proper with help of VU2JRT. I use regular solder to do that but it’s incomplete. Latter, I went to QTH of VU2JRT and he helped me to solder it properly. Its show “How am i new to this!”
Now It’s time to think about the antenna wire. I bought 2.5SQ electrical wire with two colors Red for the radiator and Black for the Ground (Colors doesn’t matter, its just to set radiation leg as red one). At present for testing purpose I am making 20m antenna only, latter i will make 40m too after getting positive result from 20m. length of both leg is about 16.5 feet. I used an antenna calculator for the same, we will talk about that in upcoming post.
I need End point insulator for the antenna cable. I use spare TFO Hose pipe holders from my manufacturing unit.
After soldering to SO239, my antenna is ready for mount on mast. While soldering due to heat , some of wire got shorten so SWR for 14.200MHZ is about 1.5 I made a mistake of cutting sorter wire, Next time i will take care of that too. Only by making mistakes we can learn something that we never make the same mistake again.
I made a lot many long distance DX QSO using this antenna, you can check it out my profile on VU3EFL’s QRZ.com page. At present on 4-sep-2023, I had the longest distance QSO is with Italy station – IZ0PAU. its about 6023 KM from my QTH.
On Feb 2024, I upgraded my antenna to dual band 40m and 20m, both SWR is set as 1:1. I have photos and video of my antenna, which i will share latter on this post.
Warning: Before experimenting anything, you must need ham radio license from the government, dont try anything without license.
