How TO. Tunes up the Wolf River Coils Antenna
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- Опубліковано 4 січ 2025
- This is a very versatile antenna system - even more versatile if you use a longer whip! (For the longer whip, I'd use a broader base or a spike so it doesn't fall over). No Tuner required - you are the tuner!
Gear Used In Today's Video:
👉 Wolf River Coils Antennas: www.wolfriverc...
👉 WRC Tuning Instructions: www.wolfriverc...
My Setup:
78" Whip (get the 17 foot/204 inch whip)
3x 33' Radials
12" tripod kit
Silver Bullet 1000 80-10m
👉 Yaesu FT-100D: www.yaesu.com/...
👉 NanoVNA: geni.us/hi5pAW
👉 ABR Coax W/Integrated Choke: abrind.com/shop/
👉 PowerQueen 100Ah Mini Battery: ipowerqueen.co...
👉 Walmart Hookup Wire: www.walmart.co...
👉 Crimper: geni.us/bqfprDt
👉 Connectors: geni.us/DaCT8uQ
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I liked how this video ended. I glanced up, expecting to hear more! 😂 Anyway, great review. I think the WRC antenna is going to be my next purchase.
Stay tuned for the 17' testing - I have another video coming out on that in a few days - if you get one, get the 17' whip and the sporty 40 coil - and then if you want to go above 40m, get the right coil to add that in. Lots of fun!
I recently got a Wolf River Coils antenna with both the 6' and 17' whips. I already had an MFJ 17' so I mainly use it for 20m and up without the coil. I have the three 33 ft radials plus nine 10 ft radials but I mostly use a faraday cloth because it's quicker to deploy. I found the 17 ft whip will give good swr across most bands so you can cover digital and voice without making changes. One trick I learned from another youtuber is tying a thin rope at the top of the whip and tying knots at the whip lengths for each band. Makes tuning much quicker.
I just saw that trick and I REALLY like it.
Really love how you did your radial system. I love power poles
Thanks! It's very useful when you like to play with antennas.
I used a WRC on a pota activation on the beach last week. It worked very well- I find that three 16.5’ radials will do pretty well for all bands in tight spots.
I'm guessing that they arrived at 3x33' radials because 100' wire spools are a thing. I typically use 4 17' radials and I'm happy with that as well.
@@temporarilyoffline yep, I pirated one to test a short end fed antenna and found I was getting about the same results with the 16.5’ so I folded the other two over on themselves and tested again. Ended up clipping them and made a smaller system to use on campsites.
Good stuff, Steve. One thing I did with my WRC is I bought a second collar. I've got one tuned for 40m and the other tuned for 20m. Makes switching bands in the field as easy as moving the jumper from one collar to the other! Thanks for doing whatcher doing, sir! 🤠
I haven't tried the double collar setup, sounds like a winnner!
@@temporarilyoffline Works for me, cuz I'm...LAZY! 🤪
I have gotten my best performance, both in SWR and contacts, with 18 8’-9’ radials, in bunches of 6 on each leg. All are 20 gauge silicone wire.
I could probably go less, but that is how I made them and can not bring myself to cut them off.
Never could get the factory radials to work, they would give me 3:1 SWR on 40m and 2:1 SWR on 20m. With this setup, I get 1.1:1, or better, down to 80m.
I'm with you, I am not able to cut wires, it hurt cutting the 7 ft off these radials in the vid! Now I don't know what to do with 3x7' of wire.
@@temporarilyoffline6m dipole? 2m pocket folding ground plane antenna? Play “fetch the wire” around the yard. 😉
The projects are endless. 😁
@@kn6vbw Right - NEVER throwaway parts!
@@temporarilyoffline You can even hook them all back together and use the wire to make a 21’ antenna for the coil. That would work much better than the 6’ or 17’ whips. 👍
@@kn6vbw good point - more wire, more better
That's a friendlier wolf than you might find beyond those trees, nice work man!
I got my head on a swivel!
Steve… at about 20 cents per conductor-foot, you did well on the wire. Recently, I purchased 500 feet of 14 gauge stranded wire at Hime Depot fir about 14 cents per conductor-foot, My first choices of buying wire would be Hime Depot or Lowe’s, but with the high price of fuel in SoCal, $4-99/gal. I’m not going to spend an extra $5-$10 to save a few dollars. Nice Powerpole quick disconnect! 73 de KD6UYK (Tim).
Hey Tim - as fuel prices rise, at 11mpg, I'm not going to argue at the local store's register... Imma plan better like you said! The wire wasn't the most expensive part of the day for sure!
Wow my 6.2L S10 gets 22mpg! Great video Steve!
Good ol' WRC. Nice setup hacks.
Great setup! Thanks for watching Dennis!
If the swr is somewhat within range of where you want and you don’t want to go crazy moving the collar up and down, you can try moving the whip down or up and/or twist the collar left or right to fine tune.
I do this with my wrc on a ground spike and no radials and I’m able to get it down to 1.2.
no radials - bold move!
@@temporarilyoffline I like to live dangerously. I do have them in my kit but only deploy if the ground spike isn’t working out as well and need to use the legs. Have had great results both with and without radials. Wish there was an easier way to carry the whole kit. Was looking at something like a tripod bag.
@_onthemike_ I was looking at tripod bags also. Antennas are hard to make go bags for, especially the whip kind.
I have a WRC, and it definitely has some good qualities like the ones you mentioned plus a seemingly low takeoff angle. My only trouble with it is like you said, it is very fiddly, and you basically have to take your antenna analyzer whenever you are going to use it. The collar tilts and changes things. You move, it changes. Band switch, start all over again. Etc. If I have a lot of time to set it up and mess with it, it is a great antenna. I just never have a lot of time to set it up an mess with it.
I prefer speedy deployments too.
The WRC was my first antenna. I've never used the short whip though, just the 102" and 213" ones.
213" FTW!
Pro tip to keep your radials from tangling, put a tywrap (loosely) around the first wire, then a tywrap (loosely) around the second wire and through the first tywrap, finally a tywrap around the third wire and through the second tywrap. When you are done, grab the tywrap and pull to the end of the radials this will prevent them from tangling. When you want to use them again, unroll in a straight line and grab one of wires and pull to the side, the tywraps will move back to the antenna leaving the radials untangled. I used this technique to pull large bundles of wires without tangling.
I'll have to try that out!
@@temporarilyoffline That would be interesting to see.
Simple and inexpensive, but effective product. I use a single, elevated, resonant radial held up by an electric fence insulated push-in post. Effective and quick to set up and break down. IIRC the various studies indicated one elevated resonant radial was equal to about 4 - 8 "on ground" radials, depending on ground conductivity. I use a Sporty 40 with a 17' whip for 40m. For 75m, I use the WRC and a 17 foot whip. For 20m and above, I don't deploy any loading coils.
I haven't tried the resonant radial route yet, but I do have a future video coming out with all the rest of the setup you mentioned. I prefer the 17'±sporty coil option.
9:45 The WRC + 5 meter whip is one of my pairings of choice (and of course, the coil itself is unnecessary if you're sticking to 6-20m). The short whip is USABLE with the coil, of course, but like you saw, it's not amazing.
I've already filmed the 17' version of this vid and it is MUCH better.
I have found 80m is super tight on tuning but the other bands are more user friendly! But with use it becomes more intuitive
The 80m band is HEYOOJ - even with the dipole setups, you can't really get the whole band on one wire without a tuner.
Great Video Thanks....been wanting a WRC. Apprently one of their team members is ill (Wishing them well) and so they have suspended online sales for the time being....
I saw that to - same - Get Well Soon!
Off topic... Great video, but it was also nice that your mic picked up Wisconsin birds, like the Black-capped Chickadee. Sometimes hobbies overlap.
Hey Ray - good catch! The best part of being a portable ham is being out in nature!
I've never found that the radial length mattered all that much with the WRC--I've used the ones I bought with it, the HOA Ham style ones I've built (shorter, but more of them), aluminum window screen (magic carpet), faraday cloth...they all seem to work pretty well. The important thing is definitely to have **some** kind of ground plane, for sure.
All that said, I appreciate the reminder that problems like this can be solved quickly if not cheaply once you know how they're built!
Agreed, the magic is in the coil tuning first, then in getting better with radials. SCIENCE!
When you said you needed radials I fully expected you to whip out 3 tape measures
I didn't think about it, but that's also a good idea - and available at walmart!
you in the backwoods. I love it
I'm everywhere man!
Love my WRC 😀 73
Sweet!
I’ll tell you though, the 17 foot whip with the silver bullet 1000 is a lethal combo on pota.
It was a pretty good setup!
I’ve had the WRC Tia fir several years. Turning the collar around the coil is like “fine tuning” the inductor…took me a bit to figure that out, lol.
Totally agree - one of the good benefits of the WRC is that you can spin the collar also.
Being that I own a FTM-100DR, I would love to find a good FT-100 to match. Sound like a good simple radio. Good job. Great antenna. 73 KG7COA
Keep it all age appropriate!
You can get 33 foot spools of tin foil for one time use. Lay on ground with feild stones to hold down. Crimp the foil onto a 2 foot ish 1/2 coper tube ring antenna in the middle. The large surface area of the foil has a lot of capacity with the ground that it is laying on. It will play well 😊 cut broom stick handle to roll up foil if you wnt to use again
Hams are resourceful!
@@temporarilyoffline think how much wire one piece of foil is equivalent
@@P.SeanCoady exactly - skin effects
I wonder I’d you could just set the contact at its lowest position and then lengthen or shorten the 17 ft whip to the band your on. I also saw a user put tent stakes on the legs to hold it down in windy conditions, thought that was nifty. Have you tried one of those screen mesh blankets instead of radials for the ground plane?
I'd say the whip is a coarse adjustment and the coil is a finer adjustment... The short whip is definitely a limiting factor. I haven't tried the screen ground plane, but it works just fine.
Speaker wire is my standard go-to. $14 for a 100 foot spool of paired #18. The pricing at Lowe's, Home Depot and WalMart were within $1.
YMMV! Enjoy! De WB2VUO
I figured they were close on price!
Try putting the coax choke 20m away from the antenna when using 7Mhz? What was the SWR at each end of the band(s)? My experience with base coils results in an unusably high Q factor, can't tune the entire band. Great work!
Good ideas - I don't think this setup would support the whole band without a re-tune although I didn't try.
Speaker wire is cheaper and you get twice as much because it has 2 wires. Works great on mine. I use 3-33' and 6-8' lengths.
I like speaker wire too! Glad walmart had something!
Love the "splaining glasses"
Thanks! Glad you stopped by!
What the Hell, man!?! You stole my work bench!
Good Hams Borrrow, Great Hams Steal!
So, that plastic set screw doesn't really need to be used when stationary.
Also, you can cut those 33' radials in half, or even in thirds, and run them all with great results. I have a sb1000 and a 17' and run 15-18 10' radials and have had GREAT success
You can even take the radials and attach them back to the antenna base! Lots of different ways to deploy - as you mentioned!
@temporarilyoffline lots of different ways. Just sharing something different.
Some people are even using window screen, and even using Faraday cloth as a ground plane.
@@KU8RLY thanks for sharing, appreciate it!
Thats an interesting ending
Keep ya guessing!
@@temporarilyoffline I have a short extension that came with the wolf river coil and a long one from another antenna. I have thought about mixing them up.
@@bryantwalley Do it! I did something similar with the buddipole and boredom on a frozen lake: ua-cam.com/video/MQA81LTmYM0/v-deo.htmlsi=cchDEAT07fsmCnSW
Any idea what kind of heat shrink remains flexible? Like ABR uses on their coax.
Not specifically, no - but I think there are 3 kinds on the market - "battery heat shrink" like we use on our CaHRTenna kits and Battery makers use to dress up battery packs - "glue lined heat shrink" which is less flexible - and "regular" heat shrink which has always remained flexible in my usage... maybe there really small stuff gets rigid because of it being small - ask Chuck over at ABR, he'll tell you what he uses, that part isn't the secret sauce
Look for clear heat shrink. It is thinner but always stayed flexible for me.
@@temporarilyoffline
“Sorry, They are proprietary part. We cannot disclose that information due to our NDA.
Chuck”
😂🤣
@@full_metal2452 wow... really? I guessed it was off the shelf stuff. I was wrong.
Walmart came threw ! I use the speaker wire in electronics they have for ground or DX 10 wire from Callum. I am in Boston NY, Getting that left over hurricane today. 2 Tornadoes' so far. Grid down all over. some wind . 50 MPH so far and heavy rain. Big mess . lots of lightning . No antenna's in park for a wile hear. Mike M2MAK did a POTA on 40 meters AM ! and he did 7200 KHZ with a buddy pole. that was funny and on video ! Nice coil ! They work great ! Love power pole ground . quick and easy and comes un done if tripp over . That's how I connect my counterpoise on end fed. Power poles . 73
The "breakaway" part of the powerpole is amazing for radials! Stay safe!
Hi Steve. I enjoy your videos. Helps me get motivated.
Cheers.
VBQ543
Hey Mick! Glad they help out!
Ground radials are never an exact science. Oddly enough, for my WRC on a ground spike, I get the best SWR with only two 12' radials; 1.09:1 on 20m and 1.12:1 on 40m. With 4 radials it jumps up to 1.5:1. No matter what combinations/lengths I tested, 2x12' worked the best. I am using 50' of non-choked coax, so that comes into play for sure. "It shouldn't work" but it does, for me. Like you said, every setup and every location will be different. YMMV.
Hey Doug! You're absolutely correct and honestly I'd consider 2x12 a big win - less to carry/fiddle with!
I'm having a hard tuning the Mad Dog 80M coil with a "magic carpet" on a balcony. Any suggestions?
If your balcony has a metal railing, connect to that? You likely need "more" ground plane or more radials. 80 is a tough band.
@@temporarilyoffline The lanai is all wooden, and I was referring to the Mad Dog 80 Coil, but thanks for the response. 73
Yeah - I probably messed that all up - keep the coil, and more counterpoise to help with tuning. (Or more whip ... Or both!). Good luck!
1. Aren't your 10m radials already as close as needed to 33 ft?
2. The extra radial from the coax won't hurt anything, since being non-resonant, it wouldn't accept serious RF current. With the line isolator choke at teh antenna as shown, the balance of the run's outside of the shield is a conductor in the antenna's near field, and will pick up RF and (unless you have another isolator at the other end) will bring it into "the shack".. An isolator (e.g.; balun) at the feed point makes sense for a dipole, since you want the antenna itself to remain balanced (for the sake of the pattern shape), and you can dress the coax away perpendicular to the E field. But when feeding a vertical against ground, if you've only got one isolator, put it at the radio.
1. They are, but I wanted to run with the config that WRC prefers.
2. Makes sense, thanks!
Seems very fiddly but sounds good to me.
"Hi-Q" comes at a price of "Hi-Fiddly" - not too bad considering its other benefits - quick/portable/packs up nice/etc
US standard units are derived from metric anyway.
you sure about that?
@@temporarilyoffline yup. We've been indirectly using metric for years.
Actually, they are derived from the old Imperial system from the UK. Read a Wiki now and then, you find all sorts of information that they don't teach in US schools...
Only think I dont like about the Wolf River Coil is how low power you have to run on digital modes.
I think they made a bigger one, but on digital (not changing frequencies as often) I'd probably run without a collar.
Don’t own a WRC yet, SOON.
Nice!