@@RidgeHikerAdventures does he have to use the black wire in middle connection and red on bolt hole? Or doesn't it matter? Thanks , off sr160 in Pahrump Nevada
I started with two copper electrical wires around 9 feet each and trimmed them down to around 103 inches. I trimmed them a little bit at a time and checked the SWR between snips making sure to trim the wires evenly. The antenna works great for talking skip. Thanks for watching !
Length of each element: 8 feet, 7.2 inches 2.62 meters Total length of dipole: 17 feet, 2.4 inches 5.24 meters I measured it for the center of the 11-meter band. I still had to play with the length to get the SWR dialed in due to nearby objects.
Hi Jorge, my dipole is 1/2 wavelength. I cut the ends to tune it, but if I were to construct it again, I would fold the ends over to adjust the length. The antenna is a horizonal dipole and not an inverted V though I would like to construct one in the future to see how it performs. Thanks for watching! 73s from 595 Northern Nevada.
Hi, that was one of my first RU-vid videos I created, and it appears that I messed up the acronym for "Standing Wave Ratio". Arter a 30-year hiatus in CB radios, I was bound to mess up a few terms while figuring out how to create RU-vid content at the same time. Good thing that I was not graded on vocabulary, :) Thanks for watching. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada!
I would highly recommend buying a commercially available aluminum antenna if you want to have a chance at reaching out more than 1/2 a mile. The higher you get it, the better. Your receive will also dramatically improve as well.
Thanks for the suggestion, I have another antenna mounted vertically at around 20 feet to use for local traffic. I live in a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, and it pretty much reaches most of the valley. Thanks for watching!
@@RidgeHikerAdventures of course it does I'm west of Las Vegas in Pahrump Valley and with my dipole I can get the whole valley. Which is about 20 mi diameter
@@caseykelso1 Nice range! I also live in a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. I have logged around 450 DX contacts in the past year. It's a great antenna!
My background is not in electronics, but the antenna works great and I’m having a good time with all the skip contacts I have made. When learning something new, we all start at the same place and through practice and constructive criticism from others with more experience we gain knowledge and do better with each new project. With respect to others in the CB community, I have always used constructive criticism instead of trying to tear someone down. I choose not to take that route. Trying to make someone feel bad serves no purpose. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada.
Usually raido checks end up get an unfriendly person. What I dont get is they dont have to answer if they are going to beca dick lol. Any nice video. Im waiting in some jumpers to take apart and make a couple of these!
I've had a few rude radio checks but they are usually from people driving through town. The locals for the most part are pretty friendly. I like to work on old radios and try out homebuilt antennas so I've asked for quite a few radio checks. Thanks for the comments and watching. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada.
An easier way to get the length is just fold the end of the wire and wrap it around itself, which also makes a nice loop for hanging it and attaching a weight on the bottom. Good luck making many contacts with a horizontal antenna. 99.9999% of CB antennas are vertical.
Great idea for looping the ends. I went with a horizonal dipole as I'm more interested in skip and I read that mounting it horizonal will work better for skip. So far I've had good luck making contacts with only putting out around 20 watts on sideband. Thanks for watching!
I'm pretty sure you have to actually physically cut the wire to make the wire shorter you can wrap it up in a ball and it's still going to be say 10 ft long or you can stretch it out and have to be 10 ft long I don't think folding it over is going to help at all
That was my first attempt at soldering, it didn't go well. I finally figured it out and have recapped all of my CB's and have gotten better soldering each time. Thanks for the tip! 73's from Northern Nevada.
You know that’s the worse possible location for a dipole. Throw it over a tree or on a wooden fence if you need it to be stealthy. Apply more heat and less solder. A solder lug is helpful on these 239 female squares. I can’t tell if this one is just silver coated or what. Stainless is water and rust resistant. I like using liquid electrical tape if it’ll be outdoors
That was my first dipole antenna I ever built. My current dipole is above the roofline and works well. I'm planning on hanging one between two tall trees on my property. My soldering skills have also improved thanks to suggestions like yours from viewers. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada.
Great video - I am going to make one of these and locate like you have under the house eves. Is there any issue with those wires and the weather ? I.e. snow, rain, etc. ? What is that green line that the wires are wrapped around. ? Thanks!
Just because channel 20 is decent doesn't mean 1 and 40 will be even..Best to check on 1,40 and 20. Best to use an antenna analyzer if you have access to one.
@@vegasfordguy They can be, but they don't have to be. You calibrate it before use, then set the high and low frequency for the sweep, then sweep the range for swr and it outputs a graph. You can do a lot more with it, and it's not as easy to use as an antenna analyzer - but it's also not a $200+ tool. Anyway, if I can do it - you can do it! The funny thing is - when you get into pro grade stuff, the antenna analyzers are the cheap ones. At least from what I've seen anyway.
@@RidgeHikerAdventures i would use ring terminals than just put a nut over the bare wire i found out that it will get wet and cause all type of swl issues
On 27.025 MHz which would be the center of the 11 meter band, the total antenna length would be 17.38 feet. The dipole leg lengths would be 8.659 feet long. Thanks for watching!
Our neighborhood doesn't have an HOA but I don't want to mount a big antenna on the house. I'm more interested in skip and the current setup has worked well. I'm sure it would work better if I got the antenna higher. I have built another dipole and I will try mounting it in one of the tall trees on our property. I think I will try this one vertical and see what different results I get. Thanks for watching and 73's from Northern Nevada!
@@RidgeHikerAdventures Yes, that will work better. Going vertical and more height. That's the key. Most stations are vertically polarized anyway. Try making a j pole antenna for the tree. That will get you out somewhat. You have to have somewhat efficient antennas as its been said this solar cycle isn't going to be that great. While that antenna looked stealth, it isn't going to make many contacts. 73
@@chrisolson968 Thanks for the tip on the j pole, I had never heard of that type of antenna before. I made another dipole out of PVC pipe to be able to move it around and see what location works best. Last Saturday, I had my best skip day ever. I was able to make around 6 contacts in Canada and San Diego. I had just replaced all the caps in my sideband radio recently and was anxious to test it out. Thanks again for the tip on the antenna and have a great weekend.
@@RidgeHikerAdventures Yes very good. Well you must have a good sideband rig. It must have a little extra output. I got into cb in the 70s when I was a kid. Man that was one heck of a cb craze. I played with antennas a lot over the years. It does seem out West gets a little more dx propagation than here in the Midwest. Maybe the higher elevation. I can't wait until 10 meters opens up and of course that's good for 11 meter cb too. I hope you find a antenna that works for you. The j pole is an easy to tune omni antenna. You don't have to buy the ladder line. You can have one piece of wire and use some pvc as a spacer for your matching stub. If you make one you will figure it out easy enough. The higher in the air the better. Sometimes its hard to get antennas as high as they need to be. Take care 73
@@chrisolson968 My first CB was back in the late 70's. Back then I didn't know about SWR and just threw an antenna on my old Mustang. I didn't even know skip existed. A lot of the kids at my high school had a CB. Back then the channels were very busy. Mt uncle about 10 miles away had a base station with a huge antenna. I lived in the hills and he was in the valley. I remember being able to reach him so my antenna must have been fairly well tuned. I just started getting back into CB's about 4 months ago. I wanted to put a vintage CB into our vintage RV and the bug bit me again. I love working on the old radios as they are fairly easy to replace the capacitors and other parts. I'm working on getting the proper equipment to tune them. Regards
I started with 9 feet for each leg and ended up trimming down to around 8.53 feet. If I were to construct it again, I would fold the ends instead of cutting them. Wire color does not matter.
I've talked with those guys also. My favorite reply to a radio check was the guy who replied "It works". I'm always thrilled when I hear somebody new locally and try to strike up a conversation. 73s from 595 Lake Tahoe Nevada!
@@RidgeHikerAdventures For me it is mainly on channel 19 they are grumpy. Yeah every city has the " IT WORKS" guy. LOL yes 73's from 076 Ventura , California.
Hi SECTOR5, it does not matter which way the wires are hooked up. There is no positive or negative point. Whenever RF resonates within the antenna, there is an AC voltage difference across the antenna which in turn will let current flow forward and backward through the antenna. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada!
You might have realized this by now, but your antenna configuration as shown is horizontally polarized, while almost all conventional CB is vertically polarized. That mismatch will cause a significant loss of transmit/received signal.
Yes, this was one of my first builds before I knew about baluns. When I have time, I plan to add a balun and post my results. 73s from 595 Northern Nevada.
@@RidgeHikerAdventures Been reading more about baluns...You may or may not really need them depending on your situation. F00king RF hobby is strange, yea? :P
A 1:1 current Balun is for suppression on common mode current on the outside of the coax shield helping to prevent RFI/TVI in the shack in and on other electronics around your home and in other peoples homes. It does not act as a matching transformer. Balun means Balanced (the dipole antenna) to Unbalanced (the coax), Un-Un means Unbalanced to Unbalanced such as in a line isolator which does the same thing that a current balun (common mode choke balun) does but is placed at some point in the coax feedline or at the shack end to, again, help prevent common mode currents from traveling on the outside of the coax shield. An Un-Un can also be placed at the feed-point of a ground-plane antenna if you are experiencing RFI/TVI.
When soldering, flux then "Tin" both the fitting, and the wire, then put the two ends together and add the heat with the iron. Pre tinning the wires/coupling SO239 makes it a little cleaner when all is said and done!👍 Great job though, I find making and experaminting with different antennas the fun part of the hobby. With antenna design, you can through "RF (radio frequency) physics" turn a 4 watt radio signal as powerful as a 40 watt radio with "Forward Gain" the more forward gain your antenna produces, the stronger the radio's signal will be. One thing to keep in mind is about 99% of the CB radio operators out there, everyone is using a vertical polarized antenna, now if iam not mistaken, your antenna is mounted "Horizontally" under your eaves of the house?, if thats the case, your not going to hear many people unless they are really close to your home. Take your antenna and mount it vertically, and you'll notice the whole world is talking especially now, signal skip is at an all time high right now, ive been able to talk with people all over the Country using only 4 watts and a 7' skip shooter tunable mobile CB antenna. Just food for thought. Thanks for sharing your dipole antenna build with us!. 73's. (4570) Flagsraff,Az
Thanks for the tips, my soldering skills have improved over the past year due to helpful tips like yours. You are correct that my dipole is horizontal. I have since built another dipole that is mounted on top of my RV on the side of my house. I have it mounted horizontal as I like to work skip and don’t talk too much locally. It does a pretty decent job but would perform better if I had it mounted higher. I live in Northern Nevada and have talked to the Great Lakes on both sides of the border during times of F2 propagation which is around 3000 miles. I have done this with 12 watts on sideband. Creating your own antennas is a great part of the hobby! Thanks for commenting and 73s from 595 Northern Nevada!
100 💯 percentage of the time is bad coax trew it away ok .rca jacks or 75.oms .ok homebrew antenna 📶.fm mode 😮 📳 I have everything I need 😅just study how to make the best mount .20 foot 👣 post on the next video 📷
