Vertical Fishing Rod antenna

One of nice things from our hobby is experimenting. And when I am on my /A address I can experiment all the way. So as you saw on my portable equipment its easy to take my set with me. I want to make an antenna thats easy to build, to place and to take with me. I want to make a vertical antenna which I tune with the build in tuner from the transceiver. The materials I used coming from de DIY store and are used to connect wooden poles. The metal sheet measures 60x300mm and is 2.5mm thick. The fishing rod is about 5 meters long. Thats the longest rod I have. I wil feed the antenna via a 1:9 unun.

The antenna exists of 8m wire which I wound as a spiral around the fishing rod. As a counterpoise I used a single wire with a length of 9m. This is not based on theory, but its the space I have.

Practice Lets see what happens when I goanna test this project. The table below gives the SWR on the different bands with and without a tuner. One thing is sure without a tuner its not possible to operate this antenna. But I did not expect that. With I use the MAC200 from SGC sees My FT857 on the bands fro 10-0m 50 Ohms. Now lets listen on the bands and compare the vertical with the half G5RV. The half G5RV and the tuner will work on 80m but its not designed for that band so I wont use this band to compare. The band 10 and 15m are during this period (May 2008) almost closed so I leave them also outside the test. Band 80 40 30 20 17 SWR without tuner SWR with tuner 1.5 1 1 1 1

3.7 3.5

15 12 10

1 1 1

First of all I want to mention that its a compromise antenna. All designs of an antenna used for multiband use is a compromise when they use traps, inductors or capacitors. We will lose something on one band and maybe win on the other. If you dont want that, than there is only one alternative. Use for each band a single antenna. But there are situations that its not possible to place more antennas or you will have to reduce the size because there is not enough room. The table below shows the difference in signal strength of the vertical compared to the G5RV (half size). Band 80 40 Local (in Europe) 2 S-points less than the G5RV 1 to 2 S-points less than the G5RV 1 S-point stronger than the G5RV 1 to 2 S-points less than the G5RV DX (outside Europe) the same as the G5RV 1 S-point stronger than the G5Rv the same as the G5RV

30

20

1 to 2 S-points stronger than the G5RV

OK lets see, when does the vertical its work locally? Well thats only on 30m. On the other bands the signals are 1 to 2 S-points weaker compared to the G5RV. Its certain that if we are on holiday in Europe and want to make contact with home its not the right antenna. But we have to remind that the use of only one radial has an impact on the radiation of the antenna. The favorite direction of the antenna is the direction of the radial. When I changed the direction of the radial over 180 degrees give for some station a 6dB (1 S-points) signal increase. Maybe its wise to ad another radial. For local contact on 40 and 80m I would prefer the dipole over the vertical.

Lets see how it acts for DX. As a fanatic DIGI mode operator is it my sport to work as far as possible with QRP. According to the low radiation angle of the vertical is DX with the vertical always better than the dipole. During the tests I asked seriously my contact to look at the S-meter when I switched from vertical to G5RV and in 80% the vertical was stronger.

On my /A location I changed the position of the antenna a bit. The feed point is now about 3m above the ground. This has no influence on the results, only on the radio. There is no BCI anymore.