The 20m Portable Dipole Antenna

The portable HF vertical is a keeper, but in the interests of having more options when operating portable, I constructed a simple 20m tuned dipole. Again, I must credit Phil, AD5X, for his article that inspired the balun which is simply 10 turns of RG-174 coax on a FT114-43 ferrite toroid inside a 4"x2"x1" project box with a BNC connector on the bottom, brass screw terminals on either side, and a short loop of cord on the top.

The wires are #26, 19 strand, "Stealth-invisible" PE insulated copper clad steel from Davis RF. The ring terminals first had short #12 solid copper wire crimped and soldered in place with about 1/2" or so protruding. I hammered this flat, formed a right angle, tinned the surface, and soldered the stripped end of the #26 copper-clad to this flat surface. I then put two layers of heat shrink tubing (first 1/8" then 3/16") to provide a bit of strain relief. Pretty simple, yet I'm hoping this will be effective. After tuning for the 20m band with my MFJ-259B, I hot glued loops of nylon mason line onto the ends of the wires. Not very pretty, but, so far, effective...and again, the operative word...simple!

Today, at lunch, I quickly set up the dipole in an inverted-vee configuration with an RG-58 feedline. In the picture below, I've indicated where the vertex (balun) and ends of the radiators are as well as the feedline and halyard. The vertex was just over 30 ft. above the ground, so, up close to 1/2 wavelength. The #26 stealth invisible is certainly invisible in the photo below, but was also pretty darned invisible from the ground. The 1/8" white cotton cord, in contrast, stands out plainly -- monofilament line would be a good option to try and make the whole arrangement more stealthy.

I set up my rig (no power supply, just used the K2's internal battery) in the kitchen and disabled the built-in tuner (since its a tuned antenna), bar graph, and LCD back-light (to conserve power). I heard a DXpedition station that I heard last Sunday, CT3/N6AA, in the Madiera Islands. This time I made a "W1JKS QRP" call and received a response of "W1JKS claiming to be QRP you are a 5/5" on only the second try! I consider my 15w to be QRP, especially when up against pile-ups that are full of big-guns -- some running up to the legal limit with beams directed at the DX station, Hi!

I decided to back off the power to 5w and try again with another DX station calling CQ -- not as big a pile up for Michiel, PG4M, in the Netherlands -- but again, I was able to easily get through receiving a 5/2 report and continued a short (~2 minute) QSO -- a nice chat!

I then decided to call CQ (using 10w) near the CQ calling frequency, and had Brian, KB1NLT, in Tampa, FL respond and we had a short QSO -- my lunch hour was ending and I needed to take down the antenna and get back to work (I work at home).

All in all, a neat little antenna that doesn't take up much room, works well, and can easily be used on other bands by using the appropriate length wires (I'll surely tune wires for 17, 15, 12, and 10 meters -- eventually, those bands will start to come alive again!)