Jay - You asked about a simple 160 M antenna that can be built on a 14 yr
old's allowance.
Glad to see your interest in 160 M. Try this for an inexpensive antenna,
easily affordable on your $9/week allowance;
If you have an 80M or 40M dipole, you already have the beginnings af a
workable 160 M antenna.
Take your dipole and tie together the feedline at the rig end. This will
work with balanced feeders or coax. You can now feed it as a vertical. Feed
the tied together feeders with the tuner and be sure to use a good ground,
radials or counterpoise as the return. See the handbook for guidance on a
good ground. You can probably rig a switch to change between the normal
dipole configuration and the vertical configuration, but I fabricated an
adapter that I put in line when I used my dipole in this manner.
I don't want to get into the elevated vs. buried radial controversy, but
two radials, each 1/4 wave long elevated above ground are a good place to
start. They don't need to be straight and you can bend and fold them to fit
your yard. You can improve the ground system later. If you have a metal
fence you can include that in the ground system as well.
This should work better than trying to load your dipole as a dipole on
160M. The losses will be substantially lower, even with a poor ground
system.
The ARRL Antenna Handbook used to show this configuration, but they have
dropped it in the latest edition. Go figure.
The most expensive part of this will be the wire for the radials/ground.
Check with your local Builder's Supply for electrical wire used wire
houses. That is often the cheapest source of wire.
Summer is a bad time to start on 160M due to all the static, but you should
have fun when winter rolls around. Be patient.
Let us know how all this works out. I can give you some more pointers to
improve it when you get it up and running. It is nice to see young teens
interested in Ham Radio. Tell you parents they should be proud of a son
with your desire and motivation to do constructive and instructional things
like building antennas. It sure beats what many teens do in the summer.
Keep it up. - Duffey KK6MC/5
James R. Duffey <ji3m@maxwell.com> (505) 764-3143
Maxwell Technologies Inc. http://www.maxwell.com/
2501 Yale Blvd SE Suite 300
Albuquerque, NM 87106-4200
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