80 and 160 Meter Antennas

No trees. A property that mostly went down into a valley. The choices for the low bands were limited. I had hoped to shunt feed one of the towers on 160, but the short heights and side mount antennas made that unlikely. Back to basics.

October 14. 2025

80 meters

The two towers are 100 feet apart. That would work well for one half of a dipole. The other side was empty land with some trees. It was an easy choice to put up a dipole with its feedpoint on the North tower. The coil of coax at the tower was a crude attempt to make a choke.

Wires going north and south.

What is amazing about this antenna is the bandwidth.

This is accomplished using some tricks with coax that were presented in a September 1983 QST article by Frank Witt, AI1H. “A Simple Broadband Dipole for 80 Meters.” I had similar results with this antenna and the same feedline when I was in MA.

160 Meters

I didn’t want the 80 and 160 antennas to be any closer than they had to be. That meant the 160 antenna had to hang from the South tower. I had a tree at the bottom of the property to the north east and another tree to the south east. No choice but an inverted Vee with the ends elevated as much as possible.

I originally put this antenna up without a choke. The SWR was narrow and it just didn’t seem right. Adding the choke calmed things down. The SWR curve is not great, but it let’s me work people.

The station is now active on all the HF contest bands and ready for ARRL November Sweepstakes and then CQ WW CW.