Build this Vertical Portable HF Antenna

Why I built my own Vertical Dipole

My interest in radio operations away from the QTH began a search for a Portable HF Antenna.
Inspired by the possibilities shown in the prior art of the asymmetrical hatted vertical dipole I
decided to test the real thing. I thought long and hard about procuring a commercial offering. The
price was reasonable, but, in the end, the cost of shipping put a delay on procurement timing.
What to do?

I decided to price out the aluminum for a home brew portable HF antenna. The cost savings was just
enough to speed things along.

I have never once built a home-brew aluminum antenna. Readers of this blog will attest to my
affection for antennas made from locally available copper. Now was as good a time as any to make
this antenna the traditional way.

The major point about aluminum is the relative ease of nesting one inside the other to yield a long
antenna from short components. As one of the goals of this Asymmetrical Hatted Vertical Dipole is
portability, this had instant appeal.

I came up with a design and built a prototype. You can too!

DXE Catalog is the “Erector Set” for Antennas

DX Engineering makes it fun to prototype antenna ideas with their parts.

They deal with aluminum tubing in a big way. I love my 43 foot antenna from them. It was a natural
first place to go for a supply of antenna components.
Pleased with my experience using the Resin Support Blocks for my Hex Beam and TV Antenna, I
made sure to consider them for this project.
DX Engineering also sells rectangular plates for use in the junction points of beam antenna elements
and boom. Thinking their small version was 1/4 inch aluminum plate, I added that to my wish list.

After some time with simulations and with their web catalog handy, I came up with this design…

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 Figure 1a – Front and side views of the vertical dipole antenna.

Figure 1b – Complete drawing with parts list and assembly instructions for any band between 20 and 10
meters.
PDF of drawing – KX4O-000049.pdf
Brand new parts for this antenna assembly, including the $50 speaker stand, will set you back about
$250… more than a little, less than a lot. Those with existing aluminum stock can likely reduce cost.

Tripod for the Portable HF Antenna

One major premise of this design is the use of a commercial speaker stand from the music/sound
reinforcement industry. A tripod with its various angles, stress points, etc. is not an easy thing to
design and make. You don’t have to because the music industry offers quite an assortment of sturdy
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models. Speakers are heavy things so these speaker stands already include engineering to make them
plenty strong enough for this lightweight aluminum antenna and other uses. A speaker stand was a
“no-brainer” for this project. Fortunately, I still have a couple stands from the “rock band” days.
With the prototype design more or less complete I made an order to DX Engineering and dug out my
speaker stand. This stand, by the way, is the same make and model used in the Hoverman “Super
bowl” TV Antenna.
Many speaker stands have 1-3/8 inch (~35mm) masts plus an optional plastic sleeve to
accommodate speakers with 1-1/2 inch (~38mm) sockets. The key feature of my stand is the unique
reversible upper section. This is 1-1/2 inches diameter for most of the length with one end narrowed
to 1-3/8 for about 6 inches. This allows the stand to interface with either size speaker socket simply
by flipping this upper shaft over. This is a big advantage for us because it provides a nice long 1.5
inch mast to interface with the rest of the antenna. Here is a link to the manufacturer of this stand…

Manufacturer information on SS7761B Speaker Stand

Other nice features of this stand are adjustable height, up to 80 inches, and a locking pin to secure
the mast. The antenna’s weight is much less than most speakers so you can rest assured the locking
pin isn’t really necessary, but is there for the cautious. The adjustable height is a great feature to
have for any antenna.
Shop around. Despite the news to the contrary, the economy is not in good shape and the various
music equipment suppliers are in savage competition for your dollar. Amazon reveals this quite
well…

On Stage SS7761B Music People SS7761B Tripod Speaker Stand

You should be able to get this stand for a very good price and with little to no shipping costs.
Note, the On Stage stand is made of aluminum and will resist corrosion. However, the small
hardware parts are steel and will quickly rust outside. You can replace the parts with stainless steel
or coat them with something like oil, WD40 or maybe paint. I am eager to hear how others handle
this.

Balun – Choke

Apologies to everyone. The absolutely essential feedline choke is not an inherent part of the antenna
design. Schiller’s Bravo and this design assume you will provide this as part of the feed system.

Different folks will have different approaches to this.

When I tried my commercial DX Engineering balun, it did perform the choke function, but not as
well as I desire. A good choke will force most of the currents to remain on the antenna. A great
choke will force even more of the currents to remain on the antenna. When using the DXE choke, I
could change the SWR measurement slightly by touching the coax. It was good, but not great.
I read Jim Brown’s PDF about RFI, Ferrites and Baluns [1] and used the design guide within to
design a QRP balun with a focus on very high common mode rejection ratio. The balun you see in
the photos below contains RG316 coax wrapped around a 2.4 inch Type 43 toroid. This baby chokes
hard core and completely eliminates all perceptible feedline sensitivities. Thanks Jim!
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 Click here to view some measurements of the RG316 Choke.
I have another choke balun for higher power using RG142 coax. Following Jim’s advice once again,
I used three cylindrical toroids with 3 or 4 wraps each. This yields three lower impedance chokes in
series to achieve the high choke impedance goal in the upper HF range. I used this in the Field Day
setup shown below with success.

So I’ve used four different choke baluns with the AHVD prototype: DXE Commercial unit, RG316
QRP toroid, the RG142 triple series and, most recently, an RG-58 100 watt toroid version. I guess
my point is the choice of balun is likely a personal choice for the antenna maker.
This big subject of baluns for the AHVD deserves its own post. Expect one in the future.

Parts arrival day

When the DX Engineering order arrived I opened the package to find aluminum tubes, resin support
blocks and one rectangular plate. I was very interested in the plate so I picked it up first. Wow light.
Wait… this wasn’t aluminum. It’s a piece of black plastic.

Oops… in my haste I did not read the description on DX Engineering’s web site closely. Sure
enough I ordered a plastic plate. However, it was 1/4 inch thick and seems quite sturdy. After some
thought I decided to use it as the back bone of the antenna. Here is the drill drawing to convert this
piece for use with this antenna design…

Figure 2 – Vertical Dipole Antenna Support Plate

KX4O-000050.pdf
Thinking it was 1/4 inch aluminum I was prepared for quite a drilling task. I even purchased a
special bit.

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DX Engineering now offers this polymer plate drilled to the specifications in the KX4O-000050
drawing above. They also now supply the 1 foot center aluminum tube with slits at both ends.

 http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-mmp-kx4o
 http://www.dxengineering.com/parts/dxe-at-kx4o
It all turned out reasonably well. Let’s have a look…

Portable HF Antenna Prototype in Driveway

The driveway became my test area.

Figure 3 – Asymmetrical Hatted Dipole Prototype

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 Figure 4 – Tripod side of Asymmetrical Hatted Dipole Support Plate

Figure 4 shows the tripod side. The DX Engineering resin support blocks do a fantastic job of
holding on to the speaker 1.5 inch diameter stand.

Figure 5 shows the tube side of the support plate…

Figure 5 – Tube and feed side of portable HF antenna Support Plate.

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Note the resin support blocks for the vertical aluminum share the 1/4-20 hardware with the tripod
blocks on the other side. In this way, the support plate does not carry the load of the vertical as it
transmits its load directly to the tripod mast.

Figure 5 also shows the absolutely essential balun. You need a good one as this design encourages
current flow on your feedline. Drawing KX4O-000049 has some suggestions. In this particular case
the RG316 balun is more than sufficient for my planned QRP operations. Note also, the lower two
bolts holding the tripod and vertical aluminum serve a third purpose of feed/balun mount points.

Figure 6 – Portable HF Antenna in “tuning” position

Measurements confirm this portable HF antenna has enormous bandwidth

The antenna takes some fiddling to find the 50 ohm sweet spot, but it falls right in place once found.
Here are measurements for each band after experimentally adjusting the radial and vertical lengths…

Figure 7 – SWR of Asymmetrical Hatted Dipole

Key points to know about Figure 7…

 The x-axis is logarithmic.

 The legend reveals the vertical height above the radial “H” and radial spoke length “R”
dimensions resulting in each SWR plot. These are also in the KX4O-000049 Drawing.
 The dashed lines are the SWR values from simulation for comparison.
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Other tests reveal the ground does have some effect and broadens the bandwidth from 7% to about
10%. That’s clearly loss in the soil and not a surprise. These measurements were made in haste as I
was marking the various tube settings with a sharpie. The good news is I could easily, very easily,
achieve close to 1:1 if I spent more time. A Return Loss of 25 dB or more is well within reach of this
antenna topology.

The large tubing also broadens the bandwidth as shown in this 20m view of the aluminum tube
(thick solid line) vs. a simple wire (thick dashed line). The 72 ohm SWR and Return Loss of a
simple resonant dipole (thin black line) is shown for comparison. Click the image for a better view.

Figure 7a – AHVD Bandwidth vs. Conductor Size

As the simulations and measurements suggest, the bandwidth is amply wide enough to cover each
band handily.

First Field Test at Field Day 2013

Where better to conduct initial field tests of a portable HF antenna than at Field Day. I was in charge
of the GOTA station and made this antenna the 20m aerial.

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 Figure 8 – Field Day test for the Portable HF Antenna
I did replace the RG316 balun with a larger one for peace of mind at 100 watts. I also guyed the
assembly with tent stakes and Dacron; The speaker stand has enough tie points to make this easy.

Did it work?

Yes it did and here is KJ4FAJ helping a youngster make 20m contacts to the West from Virginia
using only this 0 dBi antenna and about 100 watts…

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 GOTA, 20m and the Asymmetrical Hatted Dipole
Thank you boys. You helped test two new antennas this Field Day… the other being the mastless
40m dipole.

This Vertical HF antenna is portable – sort of

This picture shows how the nested aluminum tubes and the tripod extension collapse enough to fit
into one of my son’s old baseball bags.

This is a portable HF antenna.

The tripod of the speaker stand won’t fit into this bag. It is very light, however, so isn’t hard to haul
a great distance. Remember, the speaker stand is designed with the poor band roadie in mind.
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The aluminum antenna element tubes take up less length if you don’t nest them, or by removing the
clamps and nest them fully. Your choice. I leave my clamps on to make setup and break down quick.
The longer vertical section is in the open end bat storage pocket.

I leave the speaker mast portion of the speaker stand on the plate, but with the mast slid up to be
parallel and opposite of the vertical aluminum…

Tripod mast in the “stowed” configuration

I should note the Bravo Antennas from Schiller are more compact and portable than this prototype.

Summary

So far this antenna is a keeper. Favorite points include:

 Robust – The DX Engineering components and commercial speaker stand combine to form a
rock solid assembly that, other than potentially tipping over in the wind, you don’t have to
worry much about.
 No Fuss Design – The lack of series or shunt reactive components along with thick
aluminum elements keeps the bandwidth very broad with predictable, achievable and reliable
behaviour. Yes, there are still interactions with the soil beneath, yes the two radials are more
easily electrically perturbed than, say, nine radials, but nothing here demands critical
dimensions or super tight tolerances.
 No Loss Design – Additional loss from series or shunt reactive components, however small
they might be, are zero in this design.
 Single band AND Multi band – This is a single-band-at-a-time antenna. You must change
element lengths to change bands. Clever multi-band feed designs are certainly possible with
this antenna assembly. Where I have a choice, I lean towards simpler designs… less to break.
I don’t mind the time it takes to change bands manually, but others might and that’s perfectly
fine. Placing a tuner/matcher at the feedpoint of this antenna assembly is a viable option.
 Yagi Ready – Because the elements are continuously tuneable from about 13 MHz to well
past 30 MHz, the prospect of arraying two or more of these assemblies, in Yagi-Uda fashion,
is exciting. A future article on simulations of this antenna will explore this.
 Feedpoint where you need it – The bottom feedpoint is more convenient than traditional
center-fed half-wave vertical dipoles… such as the “I” styles.
 Buy, Make and Take – This design’s strength is its simplicity, portability, availability and
modest cost.

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  Another choice for you – This portable realization of the Cebik, et al., asymmetric hatted
vertical dipole is a worthy alternative choice to many freestanding portable HF antennas
including the “I” shape symmetrical vertical dipole and the various Buddipoles.

Potential Uses of the Asymmetrical Hatted Vertical Dipole

This is a well behaved portable HF antenna for 20m – 10m with the following potential uses…

 ARRL Field Day,

 Portable field work including lighthouses, IOTA, parks, special events, etc.,
 Camping,
 HOA restriction avoiding “Lawn” antenna,
 Summits on the Air (SOTA). Yes, this might be a stretch, but certainly possible.

Baluns

I’ve not had to think about baluns very much until the birth of the Asymmetrical Hatted Vertical
Dipole (AHVD) antenna. In truth I’ve been successful avoiding the need for a choke on my version
of the Loop Fed 6m Beam and the 40m Mastless Dipole. I have no such luck with my AHVD. As
discussed in my previous article, this offset fed antenna will do its level best to force currents down
your feedline. It’s the cost one has to pay to use this antenna.
During initial tests of my AHVD “Speaker Stand” Prototype I tried several baluns including this one
from DX Engineering. It did work, but I did notice some variability in Return Loss readings
correlating with my touching the meter. This is a surefire sign of currents, however small, making
their way down the outside of the coax. So the DXE balun does the job, but not perfectly at 20-10m.
Improvement is possible by tailoring a choke just for the upper part of the HF band.
Guidance on Choke Baluns

I’m a regular reader of Jim Brown’s guide to Ferrites and Baluns [1]. This PDF file is 66 pages of
great info including knowledge of how and when to use the various ferrite materials and why. My
favorite part is Chapter 7 with recipes for solutions based on different coaxial cable diameters and
choke frequency range. My RG316 is small enough to use Jim’s bifilar winding guide on page 37. A
summary of the recipes can be found in this shorthand winding chart.

The AHVD Antenna needs a choke

The frequency range for my AHVD antenna is 20-10m suggesting to wind 12 turns of the coax
around a type 31 or 43 toroid. That’s just what I did. Here is a picture at the AHVD feedpoint…

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 Choke Balun using 12 turns RG316 on #43 Toroid
Jim’s document includes many graphs showing the real and imaginary portions of choke impedance
for his various frequency specific configurations. Jim’s advice is spot on and I did begin to measure
these values. However, my VNA wasn’t giving results I could trust so I turned my attention to
measuring the more reliable attenuation values. I used a calibrated VNA setup to measure S21
attenuation.

Wire Toroid Choke Balun Test

My first test observes the results of winding progressively more turns of #14 wire around a 2.4 inch
type 43 toroid core.

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 Attenuation of wire wrapped around #43 toroid
More turns… more attenuation and from 10 – 30 MHz as well. A welcome confirmation of Jim’s
recipe.

Coaxial Toroid Choke Balun Test

Armed with this happy find, I wound another #43 toroid with 12 turns of RG316 coax spending
extra time on dressing the turns evenly. I put this on the test jig to examine the following:

 Differential mode S21 of the coax from one end to the next,
 Differential mode S21 of the coax from one end to the next with the connections on one end
reversed,
 Common mode S21 of the coax treating the shield just like the #14 wire from the previous
tests.
The 12 turn #14 wire plot from the previous graph is shown for comparison.

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 Attenuation of 12 turns coax wrapped around #43 toroid
You can click the graph above for a better view.

The blue trace indicates the toroid choke is doing a very good job of preventing common mode
current flowing through the windings. Surprisingly, the coax attenuation measured a bit better than
the #14 wire. To be honest, even though this is a well calibrated setup, the error range of the yellow
and blue traces are likely to be a few dB. That said the 12 turn RG316 coaxial choke does a very
admirable job.

Now let’s look at the differential plots. A choke should only have an effect on common currents and
leave differential currents free to flow through. Indeed, any coaxial choke balun will still be a piece
of coax to the desired signal and that’s the case here in the green trace. If you take a piece of coax
and reverse the connections at one end, you will short the signal to ground. As you can see in the red
trace, the choke completely isolates the ends from each other such that it doesn’t matter which way
you connect the end. With normal or reverse connections, the differential mode attenuation is nearly
zero dB. If you can’t find the red or green trace, they are hugging the zero dB line at the top of the
graph.

To put it bluntly, this choke balun works fantastic.

Coax Choke Balun in use

When I replaced the DXE balun with this one and performed the same “hand” test, I could not detect
any changes to the meter readings at all. This suggests the choke isolates the feedline more than
adequate.

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New Choke Configuration for AHVD

Hanging Balun – waiting to break

Many comments flowed about the “dangling toroid choke” I placed on my original AHVD prototype
as shown here…

Tube and feed side of asymmetrical hatted dipole antenna.

I agree it is not optimal. If it isn’t obvious, the above hack is electrically very sound, but was
attached to a spare piece of plastic quick fast to get something working soonest.

Choke Raising – a new hope

After ordering some more AHVD parts I decided to order an extra hub panel and use that as a
choke/toroid mount. Having the same hole pattern, it simply fastens to the four bolts holding the
vertical element so long as you make them long enough.

I wound a new toroid with RG58 using Jim Brown’s choke recipe for 20-10m for use with this
experiment keeping the original RG316 for ultra-portable operation.
The following photos tell the story better than words.

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Photos

Additional plate as choke mount.

Nothing hanging down anymore. Yes, one nut is missing, but 3 out of 4 isn’t too bad right?

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 Side view of the twin plastic plates.
It is important to note the nuts holding the vertical antenna element and speaker stand mast together
are still the original ones directly against the big metal washer plate. This balun plate merely
piggybacks on the existing AHVD assembly using the bolt portions protruding from the existing
structural nuts; It forms no part of the main structure. This close in view reveals the idea more
clearly…

Close up view of hardware

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The portion marked AHVD is the original antenna hardware and is fully tensioned to hold the
vertical and speaker mast together. The balun plate on the left is fastened loosely to the protruding
bolts with additional nuts and is merely making good use of the handy mount points.

For portable operation this enclosed little space between the plates shouldn’t be too much trouble. I
can see where insects might nest in here given enough time.

Different balun, but same ole AHVD.

17m AHVD for Field Day 20m and 15m bands

Once again the Asymmetrical Hatted Vertical Dipole worked very well on the Get on the Air
(GOTA) station at our Field Day site. We set the dimensions for 17m so we could use the radio’s
matcher to tune up 20m and 15m. 10m was possible as well, but we have another antenna for that
band. This plan worked well.

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 AHVD part of the Field Day antenna farm.

Another successful test of the AHVD complete.

Remote Tuner/Matcher?

By the way, there is no reason why a remote tuner can’t be bolted to this extra AHVD plate to
alleviate the need to re-dimension the antenna for each band. If you dimension the AHVD to 17m or
15m, the tuner should have no trouble from 20m – 10m with decent antenna patterns as well. Details
will flow in a future article.

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