# Vertical ham antenna recommendations?



## TheLazyL

It’s been years since I’ve had my first HAM setup. Haven’t been active (have kept the license current) for 20 years or so.

When I moved 18 years ago I acquired and erected a used 80’ tower. Plan was for the rotator mounted on the base of the tower. Figured it wouldn’t be too long before I couldn’t climb the tower for rotator maintenance.

Too much torque on the long mast for accurate rotator positioning and then storm damage took out the Yaggi.

Now I’m figuring climbing the 80’ tower one more time. Replace what is left of the Yaggi with a vertical wit capabilities of 10 – 20 meters (maybe up to 40 meters is the length/weight doesn’t prohibit me pulling it up the tower by myself)

What do the Prepared Society members recommend?


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## drgnhntr37

I am a fairly new ham myself, but my dad has been active since the 60's. believe me I have a lot of antenae knowledge from him. I would mount several pulleys a good ways up and go with an inverted V dipole set up, maybe different wave lengths for the bands you want to cover that way your centers could be raised and lowered from the ground. Tie that with a multi tap antenae tuner and you should be good to go. Other suggestion more expensive though would be a crank up tower, I hate those due to the fact I was the one that wound up doing all the cranking, with a low gear hand winch.


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## TheLazyL

drgnhntr37 said:


> I am a fairly new ham myself, but my dad has been active since the 60's. believe me I have a lot of antenae knowledge from him. I would mount several pulleys a good ways up and go with an inverted V dipole set up, maybe different wave lengths for the bands you want to cover that way your centers could be raised and lowered from the ground. Tie that with a multi tap antenae tuner and you should be good to go. Other suggestion more expensive though would be a crank up tower, I hate those due to the fact I was the one that wound up doing all the cranking, with a low gear hand winch.


Thank you for your reply, it confirms what AES recommended, an inverted V dipole


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## k0xxx

I have never actually used a vertical antenna on HF, so unfortunately, I can't be of any real help with picking out a good vertical. I did help a friend with burying radials for his Gap Titan some years back. It seems that I remember it being a bugger to get tuned properly, but seemed to work fine after he did. I know a gentleman that owned a Hy-Gain AV-6160 (I say "owned" because a falling tree took it out). The 6160 covers 160 meters through 6 meters, and I believe that it is rated for full legal power. Verticals are more expensive than a wire antenna, but the generally have low take off angles and are usually better for DX.


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## DKRinAK

14 or 18 AVQ by HyGain. Good for full legal power - tuning may be a bit of an issue that high up. I've had mine for several years, works good.

The Butternut HF-9V I had worked well even on poor ground. Both require tuning once mounted, something to think about 80 feet up.

Good luck


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## expat42451

*Shunt feed the tower*

I have another suggestion- shunt feeding the tower. I am an old broadcast engineer and have done this. Most broadcast towers sat on large glass insulators at the base and the guys were isolated from the tower as well. The entire tower was the radiator. In areas where we had a lot of lightning problems we would actually ground the tower and feed it either 1/4 or 5/8 wave up the tower from the base- actually feed the output of the tuning unit at the base of the tower to the grounded tower itself.

I know this sounds a bit complicated and it can be. However, if you have one of the MFJ antenna tuners or a similar type of unit, you might try this. Shunt feeding a vertical has a couple of advantages. 1) Verticals are more susceptible to picking up noise than are horizontal antennas. Shunt feeding will help eliminate this. 2) The antenna is for all effective purposes operating at a DC ground. Advantage of this is that you are less likely to damage of the receiver front end from static buildup on cold dry windy days or from thunderstorms in the vicinity. That having been said you still must disconnect the coax or feedwire preferably outside of the radio room and ground it to the station ground. I have shunt fed a couple of towers for ham radio applications and used antenna tuners to match the load impedance of the drive point (where the RF hot wire actually attaches to the tower) to the transmitter impedance (more or less 52 ohms) and it worked better than did a single wire hung from a standoff bracket from the top of the tower to the base and operated above ground (i.e. not grounded). The single ungrounded wire picked up more ambient electrical noise than did the tower grounded and fed through the antenna tuning unit. Additionally in my last station I ran an 80 M horizontal loop fed with ladder line to a balun just outside of the window of the shack, coax fed from there inside. I ran one leg of the horizontal loop grounded to dissipate static buildup on a long piece of wire in the air with great success. The loop was effectively shunt fed in that configuration. Worked well. Hope this helps a bit. If I already had the tower up and had a tuning unit before I did much climbing, I would try shunt feeding the tower to see how it did. If you are curious I am an amateur extra class. I also agree with DKRinAK's recommendations about the Hy Gain antennas. Its good gear and will do you well. Additional thought-- shunt fed and operating at a DC ground might be a bit of additional protection against EMP.

73's

Expat


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## PreparedRifleman73

Wow, this is the same question I was about to ask. So, subscribe I will!

And wow this is way over my head.

BTW, would a tower be overkill for a TV antenna. Apparently the wife wants TV!


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## TheLazyL

hawkmiles said:


> Wow, this is the same question I was about to ask. So, subscribe I will!
> 
> And wow this is way over my head.
> 
> BTW, would a tower be overkill for a TV antenna. Apparently the wife wants TV!


Broadcast TV thru the woods gave me a large fuzzy blurs going back and forth during the basket ball games.

80 foot tower got the TV antenna above the tree line and clear pictures.


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## expat42451

Find a copy of an old (ca. 1940-1960) ARRL Antenna Handbook. The older handbooks are good about explaining shunt feed. I dont know why its fallen out of favor. Probably because most people buy their antennas today and dont bother building anything any longer. Used to be the opposite. 

Didnt mean to make it sound overly complicated, hope it helps. My last station....I sold all of it before moving a year ago...... I was capable from 160M -440 MHz and built all of the antennas for it. Bought antennas are good and sometimes work better than the built ones but copper pipe and wire will do a lot. 

Hope this helps somebody out. I miss operating. Enjoy, its a wonderful hobby. In my opinion the most important part of any station is a good receiver followed by a good ground, then the antenna and finally the transmitter and power output. The antenna and ground help the receiver do its job. If you cant hear them, you cant talk to them. I had a Ten-Tec Centurion amplifier that gathered a lot of dust, 100 Watts and you can work most places in the world. I used to occasionally use the amp but only when the bands were noisy and we were passing Health and Human Services traffic- ARRL message-grams- via either CW or SSB, on the traffic nets.

One final comment- Everything today including our culture, everything for most of the folks around..... is plug and play. Radios, antennas, houses, relationships,life..... everything. Thats part of the reason I belong to this forum. Most folks here arent plug and play. Learn to make your own antennas, look for some of the older radios at swap meets and online, the tube rigs and learn to maintain them. If what a lot of us here on this forum worry about, ever happens--and I pray to God every day that it does not--you will be in good shape if you know a little bit about why things work the way they do and can build from scratch what you need. In those days, plug and play wont any more. Just a thought. 

73 

Expat


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## eastofaustin

I am putting together a new portable QRS rig based around a Yeasu FT 817. I bought a Great Lakes tunable antenna. It's advertised from 10 to 80 meters. I added an SO 239 to the furnished base, and built a dismountablu PVC mast with guys acting as counterpoise and ground. I've had it on the air one time (just got it last week) and was pulling in strong reception from Sicily. (I'm in Texas.) Of course, I couldn't get through all the high power calls while the band was open using only 5 watts. However, the antenna is one to look at. I'm pleased the way it came and I happy with my mods.
(Note that my set up is not for mobile use. The tunable coil can be used with a 102" CB whip for mobile usage.)


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