Boat Project 2021

Got bored this morning so I built me a multi-balun out of the loose junk I had. 

This is the next antenna I'm building. The only piece I need is the variable cap. I plan on making the frame from PVC that fits in my tripod and making it remote tune-able 

I'm grabbing this now as we all know how the life expectancy of a tripod website. Remember geocities, 

PDF here

 ----------------------------->8 Clipped from website 8<-----------------------------

UPDATE: Math from 66Pacific which I will try first before committing to the original design I found. I'll make a second loop to get me 80m and if it fails then build another 40m and sell it as such.

Antenna efficiency: 36% (-4.4 dB below 100%)
Antenna bandwidth: 15.4 kHz
Tuning Capacitance: 122 pF

Capacitor voltage: 2,912 volts RMS
Resonant circulating current: 15.6 A
Radiation resistance: 0.074 ohms
Loss Resistance: 0.132 ohms
Inductance: 4.25 microhenrys
Inductive Reactance: 187 ohms
Quality Factor (Q): 454
Distributed capacity: 16 pF

Antenna "circumference": 20 feet

Side length: 2.50 feet

Antenna diameter: 6.0 feet

These pictures were taken on Friday night. Not sure how my camera makes it look like day. The next day was peaceful with a little mist and I made one contact in the contest on PSK31 when everything went sideways, literally, The rain came down and literally blasted off the water proof material off the roof before squashing me poor tent from the 70's to the ground. And then continued to pound it into the earth for an hour before letting up long enough to pick up the pieces. After we picked everything up we just packed and headed back home. Overall a rather crappy trip.

Well I revisited the inverted v dipole I had previously made and with the help of a couple of calculators came up with an off center feed dipole. But this time instead of cutting my wire to the length required I started from the terminals of the 4:1 jetstream balun to the receiving part of the dogbone.  One element 23' 2" 3/8 and the other element 46' 3" 5/8 and holy smokes what a difference. 40m, 20m and 10m I get 1:1 SWRs. Which really doesn't mean much as my can-o-dummy gets 1:1. I haven't had a chance to test it's range. Nor have I plotted it in MMANA. This was just an impulse brain fart. But I calculated 1/3 wave for 7.074 and doubled that for the other side. Before that I was trying to find a happy middle between digital and phone, but that's a difference of 3 feet from end to end. And neither side feeling the joy of resonance. So since I do more digital I sided with the lengths for digital modes. I may fire up the smelter furnace and do some lost PLA casting to make an octopus antenna using ham stix this summer for my next project.