Dipole and Wire Antennas

  At the present time I am running a G5RV Lite dipole made by Radiowavz. It covers the 6 meter through 80 meter bands. Mine is at approximately 35 feet at the apex and each end leg is about 16 feet above the ground. The apex is on a mast connected to my chimney, one leg comes down to a tree in the front yard and the other leg comes down to a mast that my vertical antenna is on. Here is a link to the Radiowavz  website http://www.radiowavz.com/html/g5rv.html . See the pictures below. The drawing is an example of how a wire dipole can be set up.

   It does tune up pretty good with my MFJ 993b automatic antenna tuner. It has a very good receive and puts out like it should. I was listening to a station on 40 meters just west of Jerusalem the other night. I tend at this time to do more listening then talking do to certain circumstances. What I also did was to use a pulley at each end of the leg wit a rope tied to it with a weight at the end. This way if the tree or mast were to move in the wind it will take the strain off the wire antenna. So far it has done an excellent job.
   

Wire Dipole Antenna Radiation Pattern

Above is the typical radiation pattern of the Wire Dipole antenna is shown above.

  There are quite a few other wire type antennas on the market. My advise is to look at those and then think about building one yourself. Some of those antennas are the Zepp, Off Center Fed , Folded Terminated Dipole, Double Bazooka and a Tuned Dipole. There are other wire type antennas out there as well.

  Some other examples of wire antennas are the Delta Loop, Loop Antenna, Moxon  and the  Hex Beam. These types generally may have a director and reflector. The Delta Loop may have more directors added. The Delta Loop antenna does seem to have lower noise and relative gain over a dipole. The Moxon and the Hex Beam are more directional antennas and can be turned by a small rotor. I do have some projects in the works for a Moxon antenna using the crappie fishing poles that can be purchased at Cabelas http://www.cabelas.com/product/Cabelas-Classic-Crappie-Pole/738689.uts?Ntk=AllProducts&searchPath=%2Fcatalog%2Fsearch.cmd%3Fform_state%3DsearchForm%26N%3D0%26fsch%3Dtrue%26Ntk%3DAllProducts%26Ntt%3Dcrappie%2Bpoles%26WTz_l%3DHeader%253BSearch-All%2BProducts&Ntt=crappie+poles&WTz_l=Header%3BSearch-All+Products . Here are some pictures of the Moxon and the Delta Loop Antennas.

                                         Moxon Antenna Below

By Dl1oli (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 

By PY5AAL (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons

                                                 Delta Loop Antenna

 

                                       Delta Loop Beam Antenna
 

  One of the nice features of the wire dipole antennas is that they can be bent in various configurations to fit the desired location. You can bend them in a L pattern, U pattern and even a zig zag pattern to get them to fit at your location. You will still have good results.

  There are many different calculators out there on the internet for the design of different wire type antennas. My advise would be to try some of them for the desired frequency you want to use. Here are some links to some of them http://www.hamuniverse.com/dipivcal.html , http://www.ccdxc.org/ant_calc.htm as well as others. You can also find a number of free antenna calculator programs to download and install on your computer. I do not know how some will work in windows 8 and 8.1 due to some being older. This one cane be downloaded at http://www.g1ivg.com/wvars/qrss.htm . Here is another site to download a program http://www.electronicecircuits.com/electronic-software/hf-dipole-antenna-design-software . There are many other sites out there on the internet where you can download other programs as well.
  Finally you can purchase parts such as wire , pvc pipe and other materials at your local Lowes or Home Depot. If you need to purchase antenna wire then I suggest the Wireman http://www.thewireman.com/ , DX Engineering http://www.dxengineering.com/ , Universal Radio http://www.universal-radio.com/ , AES Electronics http://www.aesham.com/ , MFJ http://www.mfjenterprises.com/ and Ham Radio Outlet http://www.hamradio.com/ .
  As a final note always practice safety. Watch out for power lines.
  Thank You for reading 73s from Dan KC2YTI