Ham Radio HF Antenna 90 Degree Warning
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- Опубліковано 26 кві 2023
- If you are planning to install an HF antenna, you may have heard or read about the warning that you should avoid acute angles of less than 90 Degrees. Is it right or wrong advice?
- Наука та технологія
There are more myths and legends about antennas than there are about King Arthur!
Yep, and some are right here on this channel.
This comment is legend as well !!!! Im rolling! Thanks for the grin!
Great video Peter! It's all about experimenting. I've made contacts with Japan and US stations on 10m FT8 from my block of flats in east London by taking my dipole out on my relatively small balcony. I had to bend it in all sorts of ways to get my vswr down. The final configuration was crooked, did not expect it to work based on what I've learnt in my Foundation course, but it did. Using modest test equipment such as a NanoVNA does help. 73, M7BAL.
Yup.
When I was first licensed, I worried about getting every antenna "perfect" because several senior club members told me it had to be so and when I asked for assistance, they referred me to the ARRL antenna book - a lot of info to wade through.
Instead, I started to try things, with the help of a GDO and an antenna analyzer (Comet) and I've had GREAT success getting on the air. Not everything has to be "by the book" to work well.
Unfortunately what you describe is exactly what is happening throughout social media. UA-camrs who are in the hobby for 5 minutes band together and proclaim themselves experts and spout a lot of nonsense. This goes far beyond ham radio, but that's another story. I am very selective in who I watch on UA-cam and thank you to people such as yourself with immense experience who consistently provide accurate information.
Many thanks Norbert, I do my best!
an antenna is always a compromise .. it is never perfect, .. and the best one, is the one you have. and never ever believe that something does not work because anyone told you so. test it for yourself .. so thx for this video :)
Thanks Peter for another succinct explanation of antenna theory in ‘laymans’ terms.
A big thank you for the kind words of friendship between our countries!
Hi Joe, you are very welcome. 73 Peter
I enjoy the language barrier myself! Your politeness and encouragement to work through problems is very enjoyable!
Many thanks.
I have what I call a Perverted V antenna. It's an inverted V hanging from about 20 feet on a flag pole in the corner of the yard. The two legs are at 90 degrees, and one leg bends 90 degrees again so that it's parallel to the other leg for about 15 feet. I imagine the radiation pattern looks a Jackson Pollock painting, and I don't get good signal reports, but it works better than anything else I've tried given my garden space.
Words of wisdom Peter! So many ham operators get hung up on achieving a “modeled” design, ie; a perfect antenna. But we all know that none of us live in a perfect world. I’ve worked the world with so many imperfect antennas that I’ve lost count.
Thank you for dispelling this myth. I've experimented with plenty of wire antennas having acute angles and they can work just fine. In fact, in certain circumstances, they can be quite beneficial. Great video!
Dear Sir,
You are so sweet to make mention of your audience from across the pond! I myself live in the state of Illinois in the U.S.A. and I very much enjoy your videos. By the way, I I see no language barrier what so ever! I do enjoy the English accent however and, I'm sure you hear an accent when listening ttha Americans and Canadians. It's all good, I love it! I do watch/ listen to video and podcast from the U.K., Canada, Russia and others as well as from the U. S.. So much interesting content from around the world from highly technological countries and knowledgeable people like yourself. Please keep up the great work and I'll be watching! ...73's!
Hi Paul, lovely to read your comments. i have visited the USA many times, and always enjoy my visits. 73 Peter.
Thank you Peter for all your antenna advice and helping make this hobby exciting to be an Amateur Radio Operator again. I have been a Ham for 44 years, but due to Family & Career obligations I fell away from it. I loved CW & am glad to see it is more popular than ever, plus POTA has added an element previously only used once or twice per year. POTA, QRP, es HB antenna designs, oh where have you been all my life? It was always there for the most part, but sometimes mixing up the elements gives new excitement! Cheers es 73, Davey - KU9L
Wow! This video made my day! I just cut my 80--10 to a 40-10 because of the dreaded 45 degree infection! I will now break out my soldering iron and defiantly solder it back together in protest of convention! Down with conventional "mumbo jumbo" and up with the wire, I say! ;) Thank you for the wonderfully delightful wisdom! 73' de KF4LBG...
Well a cubical quad has four 90 degree bends and works!
Really enjoy your education and humour Petter please keep it up and a big 👍 about the antenna bending,totally agree
Many thanks.
Wish I had known about Waters & Stanton when I was making regular trips to England. I would have paid you a visit. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Many thanks.
This man is a absolute master and a blessing to use all.
Brilliant video yet again Peter, I have been experimenting as of late with my home brew 49.1 balun and there's no angle I haven't yet tried with the wire...and it still behaves as it should..73s till the next time...Alan G7WBB
It's amazing what will work if you just try it. Years ago I was desperate to put up an 80 metre dipole at my parent's house. I ran it from the washing pole at the far back, chucked it over the roof ridge and brought it down at a steep angle to the fence in the much smaller front garden. To my dismay I had about four metres left over so I wound it onto a plastic bottle and nailed it to the gate post. The thing worked great!
Keep up the great advise!
A few years ago, when I was chasing my WAS, I had two wire antennas, one for 160 meters, and the other for 80 meters, where the wire had a couple of bends more than 90 degrees due to the area I had to put them into! Had I been 'educated' on the problem of the bends more than 90 degrees, I might have done better on those two bands!!! ;)
But, I must have gotten lucky, as I made many contacts, and I finally got my WAS award! Yea me!!
I have also stopped listening to 'experts' spouting nonsense about how I am doing the wrong thing with my antennas. As the antennas work very well, even if I have to compromise the design to get it to fit a space.
My first HF antenna was a U-shaped 40M dipole run around my garage ceiling 11' off the ground. Obviously not ideal but to get me on the air in January in Minnesota, it worked just fine.
Haha, delta loops have acute angles!
Now that made me laugh Pete 😂 When I give antenna talks at the local club, I concentrate on fitting in multi band (and by that I mean 160 - 6m) antennas in to postage stamp size gardens. My own garden is only 27 x 30 feet and my antenna is as bent as a 9 bob note ! But it works very well, as the logbook shows.
False info is a bummer, but difficult to avoid. Best solution is to experiment and draw your own conclusions.....
Great information there!! Thank you, Peter!!
Thank you. I was advised to avoid a 90-degree bend in antennas by an old and knowledgeable club member. No explanation was given unfortunately and I always thought it had something to do with equal and opposite energy but as it never seemed relevant I never pursued it further. I'll try to delete it from my mind now.
My EFHW in my small garden is bent at an acute angle at one end, it works rather well. I don’t have the real estate to find out if it could work any better🤷♂️. another entertaining video Peter
Thanks Dave.
Nice to see a video giving actual facts from someone who's been there and done it many times!👍 There's so much "click bait rubbish" on the net these days it's easy to get mislead. Experimenting with antennas is one of the joys of Amateur Radio IMO. Conventional antenna or unconventional, location and the dreaded "urban noise" can play a huge part in performance. I'll wager there's more 90+ deg bent antennas in back gardens around the country than text book perfect ones, all giving great results for their users!👍😀
I am going to put you up for a RADA award, your acting skills are great. well done Peter as usual.
Hi Brian, I think I am too old for a change of career!
I put up z shaped 160m dipole, it worked perfectly!
Sage advice Peter, I used to have an inverted V up for 40m. The apex was at about 10m, it worked extremely well, but from just around the corner from our house I could see how narrow that angle at the top was. Probably about 60 degrees, certainly well short of 90. Sadly there are many cases where people are put off from trying, if we lose a few dB from cancellation here and there we are still on the air. 73
Many thanks.
Thanks Peter for clearing up so much nonsense about antennas!
Thanks Peter, it did not worry L.D.Cebik W4RNL (SK) rest his wonderful soul. I build his Z center fed dipole on an angle, much less than 90 degrees. Not a problem. Also, I had EFHW at very odd angles, not a problem, And in Australian North, not too many hams every few kilometers, as Europe and UK
No worries on DX either, always good reports, never use over 50 watts, unless conditions are very poor. Thank goodness you are bringing this up, I thought there must be something wrong with me, Hi Hi.
Hi Dennis, many thanks.
My doublet has quite sharp bends to fit its 57mt length in to my 30mt long garden....way less than 90degs.....with end legs dropping down vertically as well.
Works great.....
Thanks for another interesting vid.☘️🇨🇮
Thank you from Texas.
Hi Jim, thanks from UK. I went to the Texas 6m BBQ several years ago. Great time there.
Thanks for that clarification. :)
That was a great video.
Brilliant, love it great video.
Enjoy your videos Peter. Good advice. 73, W6QR
Thanks Peter for quelling all the myths surrounting the 90 degree antenna bend.
Cheers!
VU3TQT
New Delhi
My immediate thought was a delta loop. In my experience you have to for the space you have. GM4SVM
I have a CB dipol. Sometimes i drop one wire leg so i get this 90 degree angle. Its 6-7 S-points better for local talk. SWR doesn't change. In the past i modeled this in software and that confirms it switches from horizontal polarization to vertical. Is it optimal? No. Does it work? yes.
I have a ninety degree drop at far end of a 40m EFHW to keep it in my garden. Guess what it works lol.
What I will say though is if you know you're out of space and roughly where you need to drop or linear load etc.
Experiment on eznec or mmana gal.
Move the drop or linear load a few foot either way and see if you can optimize the pattern for your own situation. Anything will work but you might learn something in the process and possibly improve something too.
Simon VA3SII G7HCD
...& btw, re the 90° angle issue, I'm like, sure, if everything's perfect, but how often is one's antenna setup "perfect"? For me, it's pretty much never; but after having so many different wire antennas (since 1973), I agree with u 100%, it just doesn't matter!😃🇺🇸
There should be a more holistic approach. Indeed acute angles cancel out a signal but in one direction. The best example is the rhomboid antenna, where that acute angle gives +6dB at the bending axis. An inverted V used smartly could open a path to Europe and the far east if slanted or tilted flat to radiate there.
I've had to bend most of my HF antennas over the years due to having a small garden , I've used coils to shorten them, Linear loading , Various bends and coils to get them to resonate where I want them to ... Sure it's all going to affect the radiation pattern , But saying that I still works lots of DX on them ... Unless you give these things a go you don't know if it's going to work for you so give it a go 👍 ... Regards de GW0WVL.
Many thanks for sharing.
Thanks Peter, seems of late there's alot of hocus pocus / housewife's tales myths going around with no basis to their claims, instead you often hear " It MUST be done THIS WAY OR ELSE!!! ", maybe it's confusing many green hands and causing these myths to gain more traction.
So, what about the cobweb antennas and the moxon antennas... All got bends in them !
thx PETER GREAT VID N4JRS 73
Cheers Rose
I wonder what is better, linear loading at the top or at the bottom of a vertical or on a horisontal dipole.
Sounds like another video!
I like the chatty style … practicality and reality over myth .. VE4AE
Yes very true story. I was told by old friend it won't work very well that my wire antenna has lots of bends all most V shape and I told him I've had a QSL cards from Japan I was runny 10 watts and I've told him Look at slim jim antenna it got big bend in it and it fantastic antenna as I got one for 4m I will be making another bent antenna for 6m that's slim jim.
👍👍👍👍👍
Can I bend a 33 foot vertical for 40 meters? I want to make it into an inverted L with a 90 degree bend at around 16 feet.
Yes you can.
I have a friend who self admits he doesn't know anything about antennas. He says he throws up a wire and if it works, it is a good antenna. He has this most confounding loop I have ever seen. It goes out to a tree that 80 feet high and then straight down to the a pole 7 foot high then back up to another 80 foot tree and then down again and loops back to his house. He probably has 300 feet of wire in the antenna. But he can hear signals than most us miss! Despite having studied antennas as an Electrical Engineer, I swear, it is all Black Magic!
That was "a cute" video, and got the point across! Reminds me of an old song ... "Bend Me, Shape Me"! Tnx Peter!
73 - KF6IF
"either" is not a synonym for "each", at least in American English. 🙂
This is the primary reason I no longer participate in ham radio forums. The level of antenna BS is astounding.
During a 6M band opening, from the US east to west coast, I was receiving 59+ signal reports. When asked about my working conditions I was informed by several 6M propagation experts that my 6M yagi on the 120' tower was too high. Too bad that I had no other place to mount the yagi and still rotate it. Anyway it remained as it was until I earned VUCC on 6M.
EFHW in the yard slopes down to a fence, bends 100, bends 90, drops 90 at a gate. Whatever. FL to Australia
Terrific Peter! You would find a comfortable home at "Sherwood" studios. But by producing "factual" movies. Grin. More. Share more great stuff with us. N3JW
Any antenna works better than no antenna.
Nail on head, again 😂
How about a zig zag? ;)
You forgot the Cobbweb! 🙂
Ah yes, a good example.
Dave Casler did a video about inverted Vs and said something pretty similar. My experience with an end fed strung up in trees has backed up this as well, I've worked people thousands miles away with antennas zigzagged in trees. I never take a protractor with me 😂
A rhombic antenna _relies_ on acute angles.
Yes a good example.
How polite "rubbish", most of us would be a bit less circumspect.
It is very annoying that there are so many myths, and the proponents will not hear anything different.
My philosophy is start with "something", even if it's just a paper clip. Now you have a baseline. The fun begins when you start trying to make improvements. You may discover the next "big thing". 73
Those bends are usually done at exact specific points based on specific fractions of the desired frequency and based on the antenna design. Saying bends (90 or more or whatever) ar fine is just plain and simple BAD advice. It does not take into account the actual physical propagation of radio waves and physics laws into account. This video is rubbish. A lot of talk but no actual physics explanations (because physics tells a different story). Bad advice for people who watch this. Yes, a bad antenna will still "work", no matter how you bend it, but the performance is exponentially worse.
I have a 40m/20m fan dipole at 10m agl and from what I can tell the angle is less than 90 degrees. I get 1.5:1 on 40m and 1.1:1 on 20m and I've been able to work Japan and the US much better than I would have done using an EFHW.