Antenna ideas?

[asatrur]

I am looking for some advice in antenna ideas. Here are the details, I am looking for antenna that will get me as much HF range as possible with 1 antenna. I have a 20m dipole yet to be put up and a 3 band cushman vertical right now.

Here are the dimensions of what I have
Rect lot 140E-W and 50N-S
1 3 story house 43 E-W and 30 N-S
1 garage 23' W of the house
1 major tree between the H and G on the N property line, but no others.
The currrent cushcraft is on a pole on the E side of the garage.
Without any towers to begin with, does any have any ideas? I am not a real DXer, but enjoy the far off contact, especially from a prepping aspect.
Thanks,
Asa

[BTPost]

Build yourself an 80 Meter Wire Dipole and use a 4:1 Balun in the Center. Put up a Pole to hold the Balun in the center of your Lot, as high as you can get it, and then let the ends droop down to 15 Feet out at the Property Lines. You can use regular 14 Gauge Stranded Wire, as it will not stretch enough to cause you any issues.  Then get yourself a Good MANUAL Tuner and use that to tune all the other Bands. I have used an 80 Meter on HF for decades, here in alaska and have very good contacts. Mine is 60Ft and strung between a tower and a Tree. Just say'en  Bruce in alaska AL7AQ.....

[Tempstar]

Anything but an antenna matched to the operating frequency is a compromise antenna. I've had a bit of luck using a G5RV at home and a Chameleon portable. It sounds as if you have enough space for the G5RV on your lot. I gave my neighbor my first antenna, a G5RV Mini. He makes tons of contact across the bands from 40 to 10 meters.

[Quiet1]

I'm running an MFJ 80/40 meter trap dipole strung as an inverted V.  The center support is a 20' piece of PVC (dunno... 2.5" diameter?  stiff enough when guyed with paracord).  The ends are about 5' off the ground.  The whole thing is about 80' long.  Something like this might fit your lot.  The advantage to the trap 80/40 is that it gives most of an 80's performance in not much more length than a 40.

Without a tuner, it covers the 40 meter band completely, and also covers the 80 meter general phone band.  (I still use the radio's internal tuner to clean up the band ends a little and to spare the finals from grief.)  It gives good coverage out to 300 miles, frequently can go to 400 miles.  That's all the range I really need for my prepping end of things, anything else is for fun.  Being so low to the ground, it mostly exploits NVIS and is more-or-less omnidirectional, with a slight enhancement broadside. 

After that, I've got a 20m inverted V and an a99 vertical to handle 10m & the dread CB.  You can squeeze your 20 in somewhere, anywhere, at the other end of the lot maybe.

[spacecase0]

one of my friends made one of these
http://www.hlmagneticloopantennas.com/
and it works better than many wire antennas I have seen,
as it has very narrow bandwidth it has no noise
by the way, tilt it 45degrees to the horizon for best performance, and not straight up as pictured (you only need one antenna rotor)

[Tempstar]

Also check

www.bluecollarants.com

I have serial number 001 set up for 20 meters

[unseenone]

I'm happy with my antenna. It's a HiQ Piranha vertical.

[Cindy]

Asa,

I have a friend in town that recently built a multi band Hex Beam antenna.  It's like an umbrella on its back, directional, with a little gain.  Works well on his residential lot and is balanced enough to use a standard rotor.  Works much better than the old wire antenna.  He is still tickled pink over it.

-Cindy

[Captain Crunch]

You might want to get something that will offer you a lot of possibilities and options. If you're looking at going toward the prepping aspect of the emergency communication you'll need an antenna that you can carry everywhere and that you'll be able to use under most circumstances.

Look at what the army or the special ops are doing all over the world. They're a good example of what "prepping" might be while adapting yourself to a new situation is the core of the success. Good communication doesn't mean S9 +30 all the time. Good communication mean that you need to be able to pass or receive some information or a message anywhere and as fast as possible. So is you can pass a message with a 45 or 55 report then it's a success. Remember that you've to compose with your environment to make it work. So forget about antenna that need to be played with sliding coils, jumpers or plugs. You need something that you'll install and that will work immediately and under any type of weather conditions. You need a broadband or multiband antenna.

Look what happen recently on the East Coast and the Midwest of the United-States. They got snow like nobody business this year! Imagine going in your yard to play with coil jumpers and retractable antenna whips while you have a couple of feet of snow and the wet snow or the rain detuning your coil all the time.

You might want to look at the EMCOMM II for your base station needs and maybe at the new CHA TD that Chameleon Antenna just released recently. It's the closest thing that I know of emergency/prepping communication.

CHA TD
http://chameleonantenna.com/PORTABLE%20ANTENNA/CHA%20TD/CHA%20TD.html


PDF
http://chameleonantenna.com/resources/Chameleon_Antenna_TD.pdf

-CC

[Tevin]

You might want to look at the EMCOMM II for your base station needs and maybe at the new CHA TD that Chameleon Antenna just released recently. It's the closest thing that I know of emergency/prepping communication.

CHA TD
http://chameleonantenna.com/PORTABLE%20ANTENNA/CHA%20TD/CHA%20TD.html


PDF
http://chameleonantenna.com/resources/Chameleon_Antenna_TD.pdf

-CC

That's a cool product but the price tag....holy cats!

Three-hundred bucks for what is really just a glorified dipole in a MOLLE bag. Reading the fine print, the "Tactical Dipole" is an add-on to the EMCOMM-II. So to get the full use of the setup you need to lay out $370 +shipping and buy both. 

There seems to be a trend where all a business has to do is call something "tactical" and the customers will cheerfully pay three times as much as the thing is really worth.

I gotta find a way to cash in on this myself.

[Captain Crunch]

Tevin,

Well when you start to look behind the price tag and think about all the research & development time invested, the prototyping, the materials, the special equipments and the tooling that was required to achieve that you'll see that the price is pretty much right!

I know antenna building myself and manufacturing in general and building something like that with about the same quality, materials and everything, would probably cost me close to $400 to $500. On top of that they've employees and engineers to pay, rent, electricity, insurance, marketing, shipping, accountant and a ton of other things that I don't know about. If they've dealers then the price need to be high enough for the dealers to make a profit too.

Just the swager used to crimp copper sleeve which they seem to use to create loop at the end of each wire cost brand new between $200 to $400+ each. The copper clad iron wire will probably cost $0.25 to $0.30 per foot because we don't buy in large quantity like they probably do. So for 170' of wire it will cost you $45+. They're using stainless steel carabiner at probably $6 each so this is another $30. The resistor probably cost about $35 to $40 each to manufacture so another $80. The coax cable will probably cost $35 to $40 depending of the component quality. That kind of bag is about $40. The wire winder are probably $5 or $6 each... When you add all that you're getting pretty close to $500 and you haven't added the EMCOMM-II yet!

I think that we've been spoiled during the last decades by Chinese junk and when we see the real cost of an actual quality product we got all surprised. But that's the real cost of something manufactured in USA.

I guess that you pay for what you get. I already own few antennas from those people and they are not the regular stuff that you'll see online and/or made in China. I've one of their HYBRID-MINI and the unit is entirely machined from aluminum and some very hard polymer. You really need to feel it in your hand to understand what it is.

I think that we can have the same comparison with computer. I've been using PC since 1993 and since about 6 years ago I switched to Mac. Yes it is more expansive but I'll tell you that I will never go back to PC EVER!!! You simply have to try it yourself to understand and feel it by yourself. Everything is better on a Mac than a PC.

-CC

[AD]

I think that we can have the same comparison with computer. I've been using PC since 1993 and since about 6 years ago I switched to Mac. Yes it is more expansive but I'll tell you that I will never go back to PC EVER!!! You simply have to try it yourself to understand and feel it by yourself. Everything is better on a Mac than a PC.

-CC

CC

Sorry to hear about you slipping into the "dark side" 

[BTPost]

and IF you need to run WinDoZZ (or just about any other OS) you can run it on a Virtual Machine, from inside MacOSX.... Easy Piezy... Just Say'en....

[Tempstar]

Ya know, when you build a rifle you buy the rifle and then spend that amount again on the glass. HF antennae are about the same.. Just my observation.

[Captain Crunch]

Ya know, when you build a rifle you buy the rifle and then spend that amount again on the glass. HF antennae are about the same.. Just my observation.

Absolutely! A good glass worth about the same thing than the rifle. What's the point of having a good AR-15 LMT MRP CQB 16 if you're to use with a crappy UTG red dot! You put something like a ACOG or an AimPoint!