ESAHome
WhatIsAnESA
Characteristics
Dilemma
SmallAntennas
Solution
Conclusions
Resources

Application of Concepts
Putting it all together

  • After trying several different approaches and following many dead ends, I finally settled on a relatively small loaded vertical antenna design that worked reasonably well on the 80 meter band.

  • All contacts with this antenna would be done on SSB voice only, so it had to perform reasonably well - and it does.

  • The antenna is about 16 feet in height and is about as large as was practical for my location.

  • This height is approximately 1/16th wavelength or 22.5 electrical degrees at 80 meters.

  • A moderate size top hat was located as high as stability would allow.

  • A minimum inductance coil was installed to cancel out the remaining capacitive reactance: 18 turns of #10 THHN solid core wire on a 4 inch piece of PVC drain pipe.

  • The loading coil was situated at the optimum 50% to 60% up the length of the antenna.

  • The portion below the coil is solid 3/8 inch aluminum. A metal telescoping golf ball retriever made an excellent adjustable whip for frquency changes.

  • I tried (2) 1/4 wavelength radials, but since this was supposed to be a "temporary/portable" antenna, grounding was finally accomplished with very short radials ending at (4) 4 ft. grounding stakes - adequate at best!

  • The grounding stakes play a secondary role: anchoring the two windward guy ropes that give this low wind profile antenna great stability.

  • Adding short radials and grounding stakes had the following effect:

    • Using 1 ground stake the bandwidth with an SWR of 1:1 was 50 kHz wide.

    • Using 4 ground stakes the bandwidth with an SWR of 1:1 was 24 kHz wide.

  • More grounding stakes reduced the BW from 50kHz down to 24kHz. Was this an improvement?

  • Lastly, a choke was installed in the feed line at the antenna base - with no ill effects!