Ham Radio Help Desk

J-pole antennas are an interesting solution to the goal of more gain with a simple antenna. I won’t go into the specifics of what a J-pole is as there are plenty of sites on the Internet with good plans to help you build your own.

However, there seems to be much hype about j-poles that make some folks think they have some kind of magical antenna properties. Indeed many folks report staggering improvements over their previous antennas. Is all the hype warranted?
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Doug Adams must have not been an amateur radio operator for he seems to have missed the answer to everything suggesting 42 as the answer to it all.

Perhaps he is right for many things, but for ham radio folks evaluating antenna choices a popular answer for the height of a vertical antenna for the HF bands appears to be 43.

Be sure to check out the many posts about the 43 foot antenna here at Ham Help Desk.
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