Low Band Aerials's - G7LRR Amateur Radio Site

160m Aerials

aerials's I have found to work in my small Garden of 20ft x 15ft with a 60ft mast.

80m and 160m is not all together a no win situation when your in a house with a small garden.

The First thing I would do is get as much metal and earth wires under the grass in the small garden zig zag them if you need to but do cross them over each other.

I have 20ft x 15ft of grass and soil which I have cover in wire over the winter and by summer all the wire have gone under the soil and grass,
I placed 8ft earth rods every 6ft square in the garden and tried all of them together with insulated wire the heavy the better all, I ended up with a earth system small but good.

Below I list the aerials I have tried and use today still.

80m Dipole feed with 50 ohm Coax Direct.

The Apex is up at 65ft and the Ends at about 40 to 45ft and fold back about 10ft towards the mast again as high as possible.

Below is Great aerials for 160m by Alan G4ERZ Phil M0VEY sent me some picture of the one he has made and is having good results. Easy to make and costs very little.

160m Small Vertical that Works

This Vertical helical wound Top Band aerial, Designed by Alan G4ERZ From Kingston upon Hull England. for small Gardens

The aerial consists of 140 feet of insulated wire, the first half of which (70 feet) is space wound on an insulated tube.

I used glass fibre tubing which was to hand, but PVC may be used also. My tube is 1 1/2 inches in diameter and about 5 feet 6 inches long.

The other 70 feet of wire acts as a loading wire and slope down from the top of the coil to near ground level.

The system is 50 ohm coax fed to the base of the coil, with the shield or braiding going to earth.
It appears to work very well, apparently giving some horizontal and vertical polarisation.

One great advantage is that the system can be tuned without having to lower the mast - by pruning the loading wire to resonate on the required part of the band.

Bandwidth is also good - mine is about 30 kHz either side of resonance. I found the MFJ aerial Analyzer MFJ-259 invaluable for this project, as well as many other experimental systems.

Ensuring an efficient earth system will add to the effectiveness of the aerial I still have to improve my earth system, currently it consists of two 140 ft radials and connections to some buried guys stays. Alan, G4ERZ, has a far more elaborate and efficient ground and his results prove what we all know - the ground (or earth system) is all important.

He is a tremendous signal on 160 DX wise. He still gets the same band width as I do, though.

I have worked a few DX stations with it since erecting it only a short while ago, and I think it has a lot to offer, especially for those of us blessed with relatively small gardens.

I talked to Alan G4ERZ about this aerial, Alan told me he used this about 15 years ago and had great fun and good results VK's and lots of USA on this aerial all from a Small Garden and small ground system.

Alan also told me a bit about the tuning of the aerial and a few tips which I asked if I could share on the Website he said by all means and was pleased the aerial is still been used so here we go.

When tuning this aerial do it about 10 feet off the ground, and tune it for which part of band you like but you will find you can tune it to 1.1.1 at this height with no problem by pruning the loading wire to resonate on the required part of the band and use it with good results at the height but read on.

OK you have tuned it at 10 ft off the ground but like me you want it up in the air as this is top band and the higher the better so they say.

Once you get up on the mast you find it goes HF and you will find resonance around 2 megs or above with an VSWR of 2.5 so Why you asked well one is your ground is good and the feed line will be around 15 ohms.

Right first when on the Ground we tuned for the middle of the band let say, Right really you need to tune it lower then you need around 1.810 for 1.840 I found if you are going put it on a 30ft mast which I did for testing.

Once you have it at 30ft and you will find resonance were you need it, if not prune your top wire again to fine tune mine was around 1.840.

Still I had 15 ohms at the feed 2.5 VSWR this can be tuned out by adding a small coil across the feed point of about 1 1/2" Dia of 5 to 6 turns on a former this will rise the feed point to about 50 to 52ohms but you may have to play about with the coil to get the best match you can.

Once this is done and you have your top loading wire all setup and supported your in for some DX Enjoy this aerial I am.

This aerial is 6ft and is great for all of us with small gardens mine is 20ft by 15ft you can route the top loading wire any were in the garden as long as you tune it.

I used a glass fibre fishing landing net handle which will cost around £5.00 from any fishing shop for a 2m one.