Ham Radio Help Desk

Tom, ke6ynh, asks…

“Why don’t hams like vertical dipole antennas.
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Well I went ahead and purchased the 43 foot antenna kit from DX Engineering during that sale they were having till the end of last year.

This is the story of how I constructed the ground mount for it.
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In a previous post we promised to analyze the merits of the 43 foot tall tuner-required antenna vs. the adjustable BigIR vertical from SteppIR. We did and here are the results.
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Considering a vertical? Among all the dipoles, beams and other types of antennas, the lowly vertical has regained some popularity thanks, in part, to the BigIR SteppIR and, more recently, the 43 foot vertical offered by DX Engineering and Zero Five antennas.
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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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With the upcoming solar cycle pushing operations on the HF bands towards success on 20 meters to 10 meters you might be wondering if a vertical antenna may be the right choice for making the most of this time.

Well, to be honest you may well have just as much success with a simple horizontal dipole strung up.

Dipoles are pretty easy to build and don’t cost too much if you would rather purchase one from Alpha-Delta or the Wireman.

However, if you…
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A company called SteppIR Antennas, Inc. offers a unique solution to the problem of using one antenna for many bands. Their flagship products are Yagi beam antennas for masts that adjust element lengths for frequency, front-to-back ratio, etc. Since they tune dead-on to the desired frequency the Yagi proportions do not ever have to worry about the third Yagi parameter… antenna bandwidth.
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