10-20-40m end fed antenna

edsard boelen, 14 feb 2014

Last december I decided that I should have besides the yaesu 8900r tranceiver also a HF tranceiver for the 1..50MHz signals. So I got a used yaesu 450D for a good price. But besides a good trnaceiver, also a good antenna is needed. I wanted to start with a mono band dipole, but it never took off. I was told an end fed antenna would be a much better option.

the idea

I made a nice plan on where the antenna will be:

On the right side is my garage (full with everything besides a car.)
On the left side, a small tripod wil stand on the dormer.

The kit

Here are the parts needed to make the entire antenna.
I bought it as a complete kit at www.communicationworld.nl.
They also gave me some excellent advice on how to build it.

The coils

2 coils will be used
1 34uH coil at 10m to cut off the higher frequencies so this becomes a multiband antenna.
1 1-50 transformer at the base to make it look like an open end dipole.
see the schematic below.

This is the most important part of the antenna. I am told that if it is not wound tight enough, the performance will decrease rapidly.

here is the 34 uH coil which will float in the air.

and a detail shot

The casing

I think this image says enough. Note the small capacitor on the right.

here you see the entire antenna. The coil is shrink wrapped in black.

First tests

the first tests went well, could transmit with an swr of 1:1.1 on the 10, 20 and 40 meter band. Even got some reception on the 80 meter band. (could not send though)

Mounting

Here you can see the lower part. The first 0.5meters is nylon wire. Then you have the isolator and further along is the coil.

My First QSL

This is of course the reason I am doing this.
It has yet to happen. But I will try to record it.