Amateur Radio Antenna
For 160 Meters

My homemade amateur radio antenna for the 160 meter band is the result of many considerations, inner debates and tests.

The ARRL Antenna Handbook (16th ed. June 1991) was of great in helping me understand what the variables were.

Nevertheless, the love of experimenting with antennas played a critical part in the successful outcome of this homemade antenna project.

The Compromises

Every antenna is a set of compromises. This one is no exception.

I had to take into account...

• available horizontal space
• available supports (tower and trees)
• a quarter wave vertical is out of the question, at just under 40 meters in height (130 feet)!

Granted, I could have considered a top "loaded" vertical, with a top coil (inductance) to make up for short physical height.

But, I do not like verticals, "loaded" or not! They may be good enough for transmitting energy (+/-) but they are poor receiving antennas, being so short relative to the wavelength of interest.

Furthermore, quarter wave verticals just "bleed" too much precious RF energy in the ground system for my taste.

So I had to choose some form of "roughly balanced" horizontally deployed antenna.

Choosing The Lesser Of Many Evils!

After playing with all kinds of weird configurations, I finally settled on a dipole for its inherently balanced and higher efficiency in capturing and radiating energy.

But, I had to fit (squeeze) the 160M dipole inside the boundaries of my lot!

So, I bent the rules ... and the antenna, somewhat! ;-)

The result is a "hybrid" dipole or "ungrounded" vertical amateur radio antenna, depending on your point of view!

• The feed point is just outside my basement shack window, about one meter (3 feet) above ground.
• I feed the antenna with a short length (less than 16 feet) of RG-8X through a RemoteBalun® (current balun) made by Radio Works. The balun prevents RF energy from leaking back into the shack via the coax shield.

• One side of the dipole goes up from near ground level to about 14 meters (45 feet), then out (25 meters) toward the front of my lot. This portion becomes an inverted "L" ungrounded quarter wave vertical, 39 meters in length, made up of #14 stranded (7x22) copper-clad antenna wire.

• The other side of the dipole is a quarter wave "floating" counterpoise for the inverted "L" vertical portion. It lies on the ground and is insulated from it (#14 insulated multi strand wire). It is (roughly) deployed in the opposite direction from the inverted "L". I recommend that you seal the end carefully.

Drawing 1 - Schematic View

Drawing 2 - Overhead View

Drawing 3 - View From Back Of House

If you have trouble getting your antenna tuner to deal with the reactances of this antenna, you can try cutting back on the length of the counterpoise, about ten (10) centimeters at a time.

The Results Are What Counts

As you can see, this amateur radio antenna system for 160 meters is "unorthodox", to say the least. It is the best set of compromises I have been able to come up with, after many experiments.

Oh! By the way. It works like a charm, for both local and DX!

73 de VE2DPE

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