10 meter band folded dipole

[ChrisSmolinski]

My resurrected 10 meter dipole, this time as a folded dipole.

Each element is 8 ft 7 inches long, made of 300 ohm ladder line, feeding a 4:1 balun and 75 ohm RG-6 coax.

I weaved a piece of rope through the ladder line to provide mechanical support, the far ends of the rope are tied to the rope in the trees, this way there is little or no mechanical stress on the ladder line itself:


The rope is also tied around the balun's eyebolt:


It's currently up about 25 or 30 ft, which is not very high overall, but on 10 meters we're in the 3/4 wavelength or so range. I want to raise it a bit more, to about one wavelength, for more low angle radiation in the pattern.

The SWR looks pretty good:

[ThaDood]

NICE!!!!! Put that to a scanner this December to hear when Sporadic E openings up the FM portion of the band on 29.600MHz simplex and the 10M FM repeater FREQ's, 29.620, 29.640, 29.660, and 29.680MHz. You might even hear AM'ers on 29.0000000MHz. Looks like a good CB receiving antenna too for 27MHz and even the 11M broadcast band, where you've got WWV at 25.0000MHz and those radio station auxiliary stations in NBFM. Lots to hear for sure, now we need to wait for the Winter Sporadic E season to pick back up around Christmas and New Year's.

[pinto vortando]

COOL !   

[ChrisSmolinski]

I did some quick tests yesterday afternoon. I was able to reach the KiwiSDR in Mt Airy MD (25 or so miles away) on 10 meters, I assume via direct wave / line of sight.   On 11 meters it's great for reception, lots of signals noted that were weak or non existent on other antennas.  I do need to raise one end of it a bit higher, perhaps today if the rain holds off.