80 Meter Full Wave Loop Ham Radio Antenna or Amateur Radio Antenna. This antenna is resonant at 3.650 MHz ~-~~-~~~-~~-~ Flag Pole Antenna • Making a Ham Antenna F...
Good job, and this is what antenna tuners are for. I'll take a quote out of Chapter 2 in the Antenna handbook. "Please recognize that an antenna need not be resonant in order to be an effective radiator. There is in fact nothing magic about having a resonant antenna, provided of course that you can devise some efficient means to feed the antenna. Many amateurs use non-resonant (even random-length) antennas fed with open-wire transmission lines and antenna tuners. They radiate signals just as well as those using coaxial cable and resonant antennas, and as a bonus they usually can use these antenna systems on multiple frequency bands."
Thank you!!! I cannot wait till conditions are really good... I will try to find some bed springs and see how they will work for antenna :) I have heard they have used those.... However, I haven't seen any laying around in a long while....
I am a new ham KJ7VUL and have been working on an OCFD for 80 meters with the balun at my barn and the legs running out to a couple trees. I had a 1.1 at 3.47 using my Nano VNA and wanted to move to at least 3.5 by trimming the legs. After doing a lot of trimming and never getting it to move much I attached it to my RTL-SDR and then I didn't anything but noise. I don't have my general and don't have an HF radio yet. I probably trimmed too much so I gave up for the night. I had a great signal from 3.5 to 54 before I started trimming. Ha Ha! Sometimes it is better to leave well enough alone. This morning I will try to lengthen it out and start all over. I am using RG6 braid trying to widen the usable band width.
Thank you for watching my video! I haven't used a OCFD antenna. When you get a radio, I know I would not use RG6, rather I would use a quality lmr400 type coax, The Coax Man has a similar coax which is flexible. Plus I would use a balun designs 4:1 balun on the antenna end and OCF antennas have a lot of RFI in the shack so I would use a 1:1 choke in the shack between your radio and the coax.. Good luck on getting your General. Bands are great right now. I was talking to a guy in NC after I signed with him a Irish station called me.
I played around like this for some time before finally getting a vertical antenna. I had constructed a dual loop for 80m antenna which worked well on 40m and even better on 20m. The problem when trying to use it on 80m was height. When I got my calculator and checked to see how far it needed to be off the ground (1/4 wave) I realized that I wasn't going to meet the required 67 foot minimum needed to get the signal going toward the horizon. The hight was okay for 40m and 20m, but my city lot without adiquite trees wasn't going to work out, unless I planned on my signal going strait up.
Morpheus, I use my 80 meter loop on mostly on 20, 17, 15 and 10 meters. I had the ARRL tell me that even though there are lobes, the gain on 20 meters would be almost as good a a beam and that probably is with the height. I think on 10 meters it maybe more. I don't have my loop up high, 23 ft in 2 places and about 35 in the tree now. On 80 meters I always get great signal reports. I am working Europe, New Zeeland, and other countries easy. I hope your vertical is doing well.
@@RichRodgersOnline I have to agree, my results were pretty much the same, but my loop was 30 feet off the ground so 80m didn't work well due to the steep take off angle. 20m was probably the best. My lot isn't large enough for a full 80m loop, so what I had was an 80m loop folded over and thrown back on itself. The point where the balun was connected is where the loop crossed over itself and the loops were separated by about 8ft. It did really well above 80m and I was just getting ready to get my ham license when I started building it. The SWR worked out to be less than 1.7 as the high point over 40m and 20m but I had to use a tuner to cover the other bands. I've been a swl for many years and while I was putting it up and making the balun I was studying for my technician license and decided to study for my general too. I'd been telling the grand kids about talking to Santa on 80m, so I decided to get a hustler trapped vertical soon after passing the tech and general tests on the same day. All in all, I got it set up (elevated) and the grand kids got to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Cheers, 73s KE8OPY.
@@RhythmicSensations Wow! How neat is that? Well, I am glad the vertical is working for you! Grand Kids probably thought that was great! Hope to see you on the air. 73. Rich
Great video. Some HOAs prohibit weather antennas but would allow weather stations. An advantage of that scenario is that it would more easily explain the wires going to the boxes.
While the tuner is convenient your swr (as I’m sure you know) is quite high for a coax feed loop and it looked like you had a lot of it. 100ft? It might pay to ad some wire.
Correct formula is 1005/frequency. Would put you at 283' vs 263'. Usually would leave you slightly long, but much easier to cut down length rather than add. Also, did you measure the impedance. Because of velocity factors of different insulated wires, generally a 4:1 balun works better.
Yes. Made by ag6if. I just moved recently. Held up by tree limbs. At Old QTH 80-10 was below 2.0 SWR. I just took off 6” and dip moved 112kc. I’m at 6’ high for a short span. The rest is about 30’. I will try to raise with a birdhouse. Signal to noise ratio is amazing. Cheers. Keep in touch. ab5gc@aol.com
Thank you for watching my video! The antenna is working great! I have to use a antenna tuner for some of the bands. I was talking to North Carolina, then a guy calls me from Ireland, and he was stronger than the guy in N.C.
Wonder if feeding with window line would help. Love the bird houses. If somebody ask about the wires just say the keep they houses from flopping around in the wind.
Cool video. A few weeks ago I purchased hard drawn #12 for my 80 meter delta loop, which I will be putting up in a few weeks. I have a 40 meter delta loop up, and it works great. How does your loop perform? Jeff W3AAB
HI Jeff, thank you for watching my video! It works great! When skip is good, I work Europe pretty well and on the 10-meter contest I worked Africa. It is a great antenna!!!
@@RichRodgersOnline cool! I'll message you again after I get my 80 meter loop up and going. It will be vertically polarized...fed with LMR400 into a 2:1 balun.
@@jwnagy I was using a 2.5 to 1 balun. Some people like a 4 to 1 balun for a loop. My brother in law uses the 4 to 1 and loves it. If you can get you antenna high the 4 to 1 would work great! You may just want to experiment around.
I had one of these when I lived in NJ (1.3ac. lot) wet when I moved to WV ( 35 ac.) I had too many trees in the way to put one up. I now live in NC (.66 ac. lot) and might possibly have enough room to put one up. I got the OK from the neighbor to hang one corner off one of his trees. The one I used did not have any balun as per the 11/1985 article in QST by W0MHS and ARRL 1991 hand book page 33.6. How does you's work with only three support points? I really liked mine and made contacts as far as Australia, S Africa and Easter Island N2VXL
Hey Carl, Thank you for watching my video. My Antenna seems to be working GREAT!! We had an Ice Storm in October which broke down one of the poles. I put up another 80 meter full wave loop. This time I made it longer 283 ft. for the CW portion of the 80 meter band. Below are my lowest SWR Points some not in the band but with my tuner it works great. This last week on 15 and 20 meters(of course the Sunspots are up) I worked 2 French stations, 1 Poland, 1 Italy and 1 New Zealand. The Antenna is doing Great! 3.535 1.2 7.049 1.8 10.363 2.5 13.890 2.3 20.839 2.3 24.250 2.1 27.749 1.6 51.724 1.9
Great video. Good solution for HOA. I own my own home with no restrictions and am putting up one for 160 as the low band. I am feeding with ladder line. That way I can load anywhere. Wouldn't be able to hide ladder line easy though. Thanks for the idea on springs. 73 W8PEF
Someone told me today to feed the loop with a 9:1 unun. I’ve never heard of this. I’ve heard of 9:1 baluns with loops. I’ve used 6:1,4:1 and 1:1. Maybe the unun is the key 🤷🏼♂️ using open wire feeder here not coax.
If your loop is close to the ground the impedance changes 2.5 to 1 works well. If it's higher then a 4 to one balun works well. Thanks for watching my video!
Good job, and this is what antenna tuners are for. I'll take a quote out of Chapter 2 in the Antenna handbook. "Please recognize that an antenna need not be resonant in order to be an effective radiator. There is in fact nothing magic about having a resonant antenna, provided of course that you can devise some efficient means to feed the antenna. Many amateurs use non-resonant (even random-length) antennas fed with open-wire transmission lines and antenna tuners. They radiate signals just as well as those using coaxial cable and resonant antennas, and as a bonus they usually can use these antenna systems on multiple frequency bands."
Thank you!!! I cannot wait till conditions are really good... I will try to find some bed springs and see how they will work for antenna :) I have heard they have used those.... However, I haven't seen any laying around in a long while....
@@RichRodgersOnline Look forward to reading your article in QST magazine - Ultimate DX The Bed Spring Antenna? - Cheers - David
@@davidc5027 David, Ha thank you! I wouldn't look too hard..:)
My grandpa was WB5JYC.
38 years later I’m studying for my tech
And hopefully get his call sign .
We are from Oklahoma , I’m in Davenport
Coz how neat! What state do you live in?
Try to do tech and General at the same time. Funny thing is people usually score higher on General when they double up.
Wish you the best on the test!
I am a new ham KJ7VUL and have been working on an OCFD for 80 meters with the balun at my barn and the legs running out to a couple trees. I had a 1.1 at 3.47 using my Nano VNA and wanted to move to at least 3.5 by trimming the legs. After doing a lot of trimming and never getting it to move much I attached it to my RTL-SDR and then I didn't anything but noise. I don't have my general and don't have an HF radio yet. I probably trimmed too much so I gave up for the night. I had a great signal from 3.5 to 54 before I started trimming. Ha Ha! Sometimes it is better to leave well enough alone. This morning I will try to lengthen it out and start all over. I am using RG6 braid trying to widen the usable band width.
Thank you for watching my video! I haven't used a OCFD antenna. When you get a radio, I know I would not use RG6, rather I would use a quality lmr400 type coax, The Coax Man has a similar coax which is flexible. Plus I would use a balun designs 4:1 balun on the antenna end and OCF antennas have a lot of RFI in the shack so I would use a 1:1 choke in the shack between your radio and the coax.. Good luck on getting your General. Bands are great right now. I was talking to a guy in NC after I signed with him a Irish station called me.
I played around like this for some time before finally getting a vertical antenna. I had constructed a dual loop for 80m antenna which worked well on 40m and even better on 20m. The problem when trying to use it on 80m was height. When I got my calculator and checked to see how far it needed to be off the ground (1/4 wave) I realized that I wasn't going to meet the required 67 foot minimum needed to get the signal going toward the horizon. The hight was okay for 40m and 20m, but my city lot without adiquite trees wasn't going to work out, unless I planned on my signal going strait up.
Morpheus, I use my 80 meter loop on mostly on 20, 17, 15 and 10 meters. I had the ARRL tell me that even though there are lobes, the gain on 20 meters would be almost as good a a beam and that probably is with the height. I think on 10 meters it maybe more. I don't have my loop up high, 23 ft in 2 places and about 35 in the tree now. On 80 meters I always get great signal reports. I am working Europe, New Zeeland, and other countries easy. I hope your vertical is doing well.
@@RichRodgersOnline I have to agree, my results were pretty much the same, but my loop was 30 feet off the ground so 80m didn't work well due to the steep take off angle. 20m was probably the best. My lot isn't large enough for a full 80m loop, so what I had was an 80m loop folded over and thrown back on itself.
The point where the balun was connected is where the loop crossed over itself and the loops were separated by about 8ft. It did really well above 80m and I was just getting ready to get my ham license when I started building it. The SWR worked out to be less than 1.7 as the high point over 40m and 20m but I had to use a tuner to cover the other bands. I've been a swl for many years and while I was putting it up and making the balun I was studying for my technician license and decided to study for my general too.
I'd been telling the grand kids about talking to Santa on 80m, so I decided to get a hustler trapped vertical soon after passing the tech and general tests on the same day. All in all, I got it set up (elevated) and the grand kids got to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas.
Cheers, 73s KE8OPY.
@@RhythmicSensations Wow! How neat is that? Well, I am glad the vertical is working for you! Grand Kids probably thought that was great! Hope to see you on the air. 73. Rich
Great video. Some HOAs prohibit weather antennas but would allow weather stations. An advantage of that scenario is that it would more easily explain the wires going to the boxes.
Good point! Thank you for watching my video...
thank you RICH
Mario, Thank you for watching my video!!
While the tuner is convenient your swr (as I’m sure you know) is quite high for a coax feed loop and it looked like you had a lot of it. 100ft? It might pay to ad some wire.
Yes, my coax was probably 100 ft. And yes, I think I needed to add more wire. Thank you so much for watching my video..
Correct formula is 1005/frequency. Would put you at 283' vs 263'. Usually would leave you slightly long, but much easier to cut down length rather than add.
Also, did you measure the impedance. Because of velocity factors of different insulated wires, generally a 4:1 balun works better.
When close to the ground a 2.5 balun works better with the impedance.
@@RichRodgersOnline depends on height, band, wire, length, etc.
you can probably reduce some of that SWR by taking the coax feed line out of a conductive pipe no?
I am not sure. The pipe probably has a factor
Rich. Love the 80 meter loop with the 2.5 to 1 balun. Mine is a little too long. SWR good on all FT8 frequencies except 80.
de ab5gc
Joe, what is your balun? Is it air core?
Yes. Made by ag6if. I just moved recently. Held up by tree limbs. At Old QTH 80-10 was below 2.0 SWR. I just took off 6” and dip moved 112kc. I’m at 6’ high for a short span. The rest is about 30’. I will try to raise with a birdhouse. Signal to noise ratio is amazing. Cheers. Keep in touch.
ab5gc@aol.com
Love how you camouflaged the whole thing. How did it work out?
Thank you for watching my video! The antenna is working great! I have to use a antenna tuner for some of the bands. I was talking to North Carolina, then a guy calls me from Ireland, and he was stronger than the guy in N.C.
@@RichRodgersOnline Good deal! Congrats!
Wonder if feeding with window line would help.
Love the bird houses. If somebody ask about the wires just say the keep they houses from flopping around in the wind.
Cool video. A few weeks ago I purchased hard drawn #12 for my 80 meter delta loop, which I will be putting up in a few weeks. I have a 40 meter delta loop up, and it works great.
How does your loop perform?
Jeff W3AAB
HI Jeff, thank you for watching my video! It works great! When skip is good, I work Europe pretty well and on the 10-meter contest I worked Africa. It is a great antenna!!!
@@RichRodgersOnline good to hear! I'm assuming you use a tuner?
@@jwnagy Yes, I use LDG auto tuner.
@@RichRodgersOnline cool! I'll message you again after I get my 80 meter loop up and going. It will be vertically polarized...fed with LMR400 into a 2:1 balun.
@@jwnagy I was using a 2.5 to 1 balun. Some people like a 4 to 1 balun for a loop. My brother in law uses the 4 to 1 and loves it. If you can get you antenna high the 4 to 1 would work great! You may just want to experiment around.
I had one of these when I lived in NJ (1.3ac. lot) wet when I moved to WV ( 35 ac.) I had too many trees in the way to put one up. I now live in NC (.66 ac. lot) and might possibly have enough room to put one up. I got the OK from the neighbor to hang one corner off one of his trees.
The one I used did not have any balun as per the 11/1985 article in QST by W0MHS and ARRL 1991 hand book page 33.6. How does you's work with only three support points?
I really liked mine and made contacts as far as Australia, S Africa and Easter Island
N2VXL
Hey Carl, Thank you for watching my video. My Antenna seems to be working GREAT!! We had an Ice Storm in October which broke down one of the poles. I put up another 80 meter full wave loop. This time I made it longer 283 ft. for the CW portion of the 80 meter band. Below are my lowest SWR Points some not in the band but with my tuner it works great. This last week on 15 and 20 meters(of course the Sunspots are up) I worked 2 French stations, 1 Poland, 1 Italy and 1 New Zealand. The Antenna is doing Great!
3.535 1.2
7.049 1.8
10.363 2.5
13.890 2.3
20.839 2.3
24.250 2.1
27.749 1.6
51.724 1.9
Great video. Good solution for HOA. I own my own home with no restrictions and am putting up one for 160 as the low band. I am feeding with ladder line. That way I can load anywhere. Wouldn't be able to hide ladder line easy though. Thanks for the idea on springs. 73 W8PEF
Sounds like you are going to have a terrific antenna! Thank you for watching my video!
Excellent Rich! 73. N3NOZ!!!
Thank you for watching, Tony!!!
This is Great.
Sterling, Thank you for watching my video!!!
Someone told me today to feed the loop with a 9:1 unun. I’ve never heard of this. I’ve heard of 9:1 baluns with loops. I’ve used 6:1,4:1 and 1:1. Maybe the unun is the key 🤷🏼♂️ using open wire feeder here not coax.
If your loop is close to the ground the impedance changes 2.5 to 1 works well. If it's higher then a 4 to one balun works well. Thanks for watching my video!
what do the birds think? it's probably like a little sauna inside when you run some power
Richard, Ha, they may like it in the winter :)
Thanks for sharing ! I'm putting mine up now. Hope to QSO with you. 73s from KU4XU.
Thank you for watching my video!
wonderful video TKS 73
Thank you Mario
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elle est trop courte