Once again the family vacation is set to Herøy, Nordland (JP66ca / IOTA EU-062) for a two week holiday at the in-laws cabin. As always I brought some radio equipment with me, and this time I’ll be using an Yaesu FT-100D along with a homemade vertical antenna. Let’s talk about the antenna for a bit.

The design is heavily inspired by one of my other antennas, the DX Commander Classic. In this design, I’m using a 5 meter pole with four elements for 20m, 17m, 15m, and 10m, but instead of ground radials I’ll be using four elevated radials.

The reason I built this was to experiment with the elevated radials. A couple of years ago I built a 20m monobander, and was taught that the radials had to be carefully tuned to the antenna, and this is the unquestioned mantra I’ve been following since.

The original plan was to build a portable telescopic vertical with one or two tuned radials per element. However, during early tests with just two elements, I noticed that the SWR didn’t change if I disconnected the shortest radials. It seems that, as long as the radials are long enough, the antenna will work just fine. I can not say for sure how this will affect the radiation pattern.

Skipping the build process, let’s have a look at the final result:

The antenna mast is from a kite bird repeller. My hardware shop had a special offer (~$20), and even though I didn’t have plans at the moment, I had to get one.

The two spreader plates are from a plastic cutting board (~$5)

I got the two aluminium base plates for free. They were originally supposed to be antenna brackets, but weren’t suitable for the job. They fit perfectly without any modification.

I added plastic trim around all plates, to prevent accidental cuts and, to be honest, to hide the hacksaw job I did cutting the spreader plates.

The base plates are 110 cm from the bottom, which means the 17m and 20m elements are too long. To compensate for this I’ve added loading coils, however they will need some fine tuning.

Sounds cool, right? Yeah, no.

The antenna worked great, but unfortunately the bands were all dead during my stay in JP66. I called many times, and didn’t even get picked up by the reverse beacon networks. Sigh.

Anyway, blah blah, long story short: what was supposed to be a cool success story, a week later I ended up with this:

That’s right, it’s a classic 80m dipole. Will be tuned to the low-end part of the band, so I also get the 30m harmonic.

Let’s see if I can get some entries in the log before I head home in two days.

Want to play a joke on me? Don’t answer my CQ’s right now.