HAM HF antennas

[bacpacker]

I know we have a few hams on here and would like to pick your brains a little. I need to put up a HF antenna for here at the house. I would also like to build one to take with us when we go camping or to use for a stationary set up, say if we were in a bugout situation.

Here is a couple of designs I ran across yesterday and wanted to see if anyone had expereince with a NVIS antenna.

Quick, Easy, Cheap, NVIS Antenna for Roadside Operating.

DESIGN THE CLOUD WARMER NVIS BEAM ANTENNA


I have also looked seriously at these two for use around the house.

MULTI BAND HF FAN DIPOLE ANTENNA DESIGN

New Carolina Windom by K4IWL - Len Carson - Carolina Windom Project - New Version!

The first one is similar to one a friend of mine built with good success. The second one is the same as another friend of mine has up and is making good contacts with it.

Ideas anyone?

[austinrob]

Look into yo-yo antennas. It's basically 2 spools of really thin wire that you let out to your desired transmitting length. There a bunch, and you can make your own, but the one in the link will do 100W. You can pre-tune them and mark the wire for different bands. That prevents the need for an antenna tuner. I have a friend that uses yoyo's when he goes backpacking. He uses them in an inverted V configuration because it's easier to string up, but given trees in the right place, a plain dipole wouldn't be hard to rig with them either.

For home, I've had really good luck with a windom. I use the design at rogertango at the house here operating 100W. With the antenna laying on my second story roof, it's almost NVIS on 80m, but I can work the continent on 40m, and the world on 20m (when the band cooperates). With a tuner, I have that antenna working everything 80-10m except 12m.

Fan dipoles can be a pain to tune. I tried once and never quite got it right, really had to use a tuner all the time. With my windom, I have usable SWR on 10,20,40,80 without a tuner.

[bacpacker]

My buddy with the windom has had good luck with his. Ran a contest or 2 with it. The guy with the dipole is retired and will spend days tweaking on it till it perfect. He don't run a tuner on it and gets out great.

I've never looked at the yo-yo before. I'd love to have something small gor backpacking.

[austinrob]

this place explains why/how multi-band antennas work (in particular the off-center fed dipole, aka windom). And it also has a design for a 6-band no-tune windom.

I don't quite get it all, but it provided me with enough insight that I felt more comfortable building the rogertango design.