The title of this blog is a bit misleading; I’m already way past part 1 of any antenna story I have to tell. Because this is the first time I’m actually writing about it I’m gonna call it “part 1” anyway!
I recently found out that, although I have a nice dipole for the 10m band and a Yaesu ATAS 120A mobile antenna for all bands I just didn’t get much further than Europe and a few countries outside of Europe. I wanted to “expand my horizon” so I started to think about putting up another antenna. I cannot put up a very high or large antenna because of my living situation so my thoughts went (again) towards a dipole. I have some room on the top floor in the attic so I decided to put it up there.
Because the band I’m using most is the 20 meter band it would have to be a 10 meter long wire dipole, but because the attic isn’t 10 meter long I needed to put it up as best as possible. I read that dipoles can be put up with some bends in it as long as you have some straight stretches around the feeding point. In the end I put it up on 3 walls of the attic near the ceiling, in a U shape. It isn’t the optimal situation I’m sure and I cannot get the SWR lower than 2.5:1 around the resonant point I wanted; 14.150 mhz but with a tuner it works ok! I can hear a lot more people and am going now beyond the edges of Europe in my QSO’s which is great! I heart brazil, Uruguay (couldn’t talk to them) and all parts of the mid / east of the USA and Canada (did talk to them)!
As I said it’s still far from optimal but it’s another step towards the “perfect” antenna! 😉