HAM RADIO: The Coat hanger Antenna 2m/70cm dipole. 

Thanks for the video! I built one last night following your measurements mounted on a flat piece wood and it attached to 1/4 pvc on a flat base as a indoor stand. I live in a apartment with very strict rules. Took me less than a hour to build and I must say wow! I can open repeaters 30-40 miles away from the second floor completely indoors and 5-7 watts from my UV-82HP. Match stays between 1.1 - 1.3 on all bands 2m/440 on my first try. I'd much rather build my antennas than buy them so much fun! Thanks for the inspiration to build again....I'm watching your indoor stealth build now, good chance I'm building one this weekend for a fellow ham in the same living situation nearby. Anyone wanting a cheap & easy to build antenna it performs much better than the Nagoya NA-771 I was using with great reports on air. Thanks from Ohio 73's KB9QDI

I am fascinated with the RF Propagation side of all of this.... I was a TEO for a Gov agency for 35 years and we did some amazing things with Antennas that we either made or modified. Thank You.. Great Job

When I was human, together with my human friends we build coat hangers from wire scavenged from antennas.

Cheers from 🇺🇸US from being London born in 1944. I have built 2, 70 cm, and FM band broadcast ground planes using coat hangers and SO-239 connectors in the past and they worked pretty well on those bands. Ray W2CH

I'm going to try this one. Found some friendly local hams on 2m will be great for joining the nets 👍🏻. Really enjoy your channel as a newbie foundation op. Very educational. 73's

Great! Now I will build my first antenna thanks to you.

Hi Mike, my first 2 m vertical antenna used 3 coat hangers with vey little cutting. 2 as a ground plane / 4 leg support and 3rd as the vertical radiator. It was an improvement on the 'rubber duck' and helped me get into the local repeater. 37 years ago now! 73 G0JLF

Great video. Nick here from Portugal,, thanks for doing it, now I am going to build one😊

Man cant live by radio alone IT TAKES COFFEE.! YES!

This is great! Drill some holes at the top of the wood base and run Paracord through a tall tree👍 I'm going to build this.

this is great project . i love the most was the coffee ,don't let it become colder bro.

Great video for beginners. Very well done! I built my 1/4 w for 2m and 70cm coat hanger antennas back in 1989 for the new home we moved into. I placed them in the attic and faithfully remain in service for over 34 years. Out in my summer shack, I have 2m and 70cm dipoles made from broken AM/FM telescoping antennas. They also work great. DE W9FPJ 73

Brilliant construction antenna! for 2m & 0.70 cm Cheers!

I'm not normal either. Cheers from Sweden and thank you

Thanks for the demo showing how easy it is to make an antenna when you're on a budget of $0.

Love the simplicity Mike - very good

" When it inclement you do inclement things " Love it. 73s😀

this was a very interesting project...thanks for sharing.

Simple and effective. Thanks for sharing :) 73s

Great video. I built antennas like this back in 1990. Placed them in my attic 32 yrs ago. They are still up there performing quite well. I did have a flat 'V' HF antenna up for 20 yrs that ran from the front end of my home to the end of the backyard, and a tornado took it out a few years ago. But it will go back up pretty soon. My lot is 50' X 70' so I am somewhat restricted to what I can afford to put up. But the is the fun in ham radio, building stuff that works. DE W9FPJ

Great Video. Can you add additional elements to the same connector to cover additional frequencies? Maybe use solid copper wire, etc. due to the length.

Metal coathangers are becoming hard to find (now we know why). Maybe they'll come back when plastics are banned.

The swr is good, but not necessarily the radiation. If you have a dipole for one band and then another at 3x the frequency (like 2m and 70cm) with a common feedpoint then the higher band will have a radiation pattern that is not perpendicular to the antenna and not so useful when the antenna is mounted vertically. On 70cm RF currents will flow on both dipoles because the 2m dipole is low impedance on 70cm as well. The antenna is simple to build and I'm sure it will be useful in many cases anyway.

Your not in the picture .. What SWR meter is that please..

Going to have to give it a try as a first radio project! -M7OPO

A cup of cold coffee and an antenna cake - works never done with Matthew and Sons lol. Great stuff and I may make one eventually Mike but I have just invested in a 450D so my horizons are definitely vertically aligned skywards :-) 73 M7BLC NB hope the wife forgives the worktop scratches ?

Coffee being cold now :)

Thanks Buddy I've Made One And Shared Your Video With A Few Pals Can You Tell Us What Co-Ax To Use Please ? Blessings From Birmingham England

Great design Mike! I made one last night and it worked fantastically! I had to make two modifications in order to use the materials I had on hand: 1) I used 12 gauge solid copper wire 2) I used a bnc to banana connector. I soldered a short piece of 16 gauge speaker wire to the connecting points and the used the screw terminals on the banana plugs to connectthe other end. After tuning the performance was excellent! BTW - What is the name of this antenna design?? I'm looking everywhere and can't find this particular design anywhere.

There was me thinking you were going to drill down through the support board into the kitchen worktop!! 😀

ive build this also but for one of the long radials i used an old radio antenna on the plus site then it was so easy to get a good sdr 1,1 then isolated all with pvc and iso tape still works very well

As a new Ham, this is fantastic and looking forward to giving it a go! Thank you for posting this build... Subscribed! -73 KQ4KIO

If no one can find any kind of wire hangers at all, there is some 16 gauge multipurpose wire that you can find at a local hardware store thats pretty cheap for 50 feet, and it is awesome for this.

My wife says I need a coffee mug like yours... 😂

A Cats whisker, never thought of a clothes hanger.

i dont have acsess to a fanct swr meter like yours so can a meter for a cb radio be used..regards

Us aliens have these sort Of aerials.

Great video Mike. I am yet to build some antennas when I manage to get a NanoVNA. Can never get my head around how these antennas work with two different lengths of elements on the same coax connection, but hey ho. Wow look at you with the nespresso. We have one but the local place that sells the pods are John Lewis I have seen the on amazon. We used the pods that came in the box and that's it since. Great quick antenna build. Motters M7TRS 73's

Hi and thanks for the video. I followed instructions very closely. It looks fine, continuity is not an issue, and I used decent materials. However, I simply cannot SWR it, constantly reading VERY high and with a AT-5555 I get an S-HI warning almost as soon as I pick up the Mic - what am I doing wrong?

Great stuff Mike. Just the thing for my ft290. I think its going to rain tomorrow too so guess what I'm going to build......

Brilliant! My compliments

Built but just for 2m. Testing with the 290 tomorrow....great fun!

HI Mike, Can this design be expanded into a 2- or 3-element yagi? If so, can the reflector(s) and director(s) also be configured like the driven element, or would they need to be separate for 2M and 70cm? I'm also wondering if they could be configured perpendicular to each other?

Wow and I was just guessing when I stuck a coat hanger into the back of the cb years ago. Never for long just to make sure it tx and Rx into a handy before buying at the truck stop. 😆😜 I use the metal fence as a ground loop 😉KC3ONO

Très simple en effet. Bravo from F4iwj

Great little easy antenna. Nice work. Question mike. Have you ever used Stainless Steel wire rope? I want to put up an 80m Doublet and I need it very stealthy. With all that wire in the air I don't want it to sag.

Terrific video...thank you. Next time, would it be possible to put a towel or piece of carpet on your bench? Listening with headphones, when you dropped your tools on to the wooden bench it just about blew my ear drums. ha ha!

Mike, I am a newbie and I am preparing to built something similar. Do you have any advice regarding adjusting the SWR by shortening the wires? What I mean is this: As far as I know, the 70cm and the 2m wires do not act independently, instead, they influence each other. So, is there - for example - a best practise for the order, like "first adjust he 2m part, then the 70cm part" (or vice versa)? (If that makes sense - I am not a native English speaker)

Just wondering what the dB gain is with so few elements please.

Does wire thickness matter ? I used 1.3mm wire from a hardware store as could not find metal coat hangers anywhere, I didn’t know if using 1.3mm wire mattered or not ?

What effect does having the wire U shaped like that have? Would you call that some sort of off center fed? I dont get why you have 2 radials on each side of the dipole instead of a single element. PLEASE explain.

Can you put much more than 20w through it Mike you reckon?

I tried to make this but my coax shield and terminal would not fit into the block! I sanded down the coat hanger and still did not work. I am going to re-make it again and use a larger board and actually solder two jumper wires to an SO239 I think.

Great video Mike. Maybe a coat hanger Yagi as a thought.

cool? very nice, thanks

Nre ham here and i have lots of questions 😂 So if i wanted to hang this in a tree with a rope could i bend a eye in the end of the wire to tie the rope off to to hang it from and if i did that would i need to do it after i get the swr set or would bending a loop in the end of the wire need to add to the length

Great demonstration and build. I'm inspired to construct such a dipole for my attic (loft). I want that coffee cup, however. Where may I find it? 73 de N5RLR. 🙂👍🏼

Amigo VHF ve UHF cm uzunlukları ne olmalı bilgilendirirseniz sevinirim

A quale gamna d onda serve? Ciao❤

What brand of superglue + catalyst were you using

hello sir, can we use this antenna directly to an handheld radio? i would really appreciate if you reply to my comments thanks

Going to try this, but maybe connect the co-ax before i glue it down. it might be easier to handle that way.

Now build me one for 10-11 meters where I run. I need one for my attic when my Arial is down when my wife goes to Town, I must lay mine down on the bushes outside my house about 4 feet off the ground, it still have a relatively low SWR but can't get out very far when it is that low above the ground. So I want to build me a horizontal and one vertical, one for north to south traffic and one for east to west traffic here in the U.S. For 28.000-26000 Mhz. So far not having much success.

May I ask? Where did you this idea ? Or is there a diagram for this antenna. (73)

better SWR then the HT antennas I have

Thank you for sharing. KN6FXJ, on the other side of the pond, and I'm enjoying learning about little variants on the dipoles. It's neat to see what others are doing, and I'll be making my second antenna, using the power block idea you shared.

Going to make one of these while I wait for confirmation of my pass from RSGB. As a newly passed Foundationier - don't we need a balun on this?

How critical is the space between the two halves when mounting on the plastic? Just not touching or ??

Brillant!

As an "ignorant" American I couldn't help but think this guy sounded similar to David Attenborough in the opening segment.

Just got back into ham radio after about 45 years. I found this video and thought I would give it a try. I couldn't get the wires and coat hanger into my terminal block, so I soldered each side at the bend. It works really well. Tried it again with 14 AWG copper wire. I could have gotten wires in with coat hanger, but decided to solder. Does soldering this way make any difference? Thanks for the great video. 73s Peter WB3IZU

thank you

Perfect, thank you :)

Mike do you like the jpole or this one best for 2 meter and 70 centimetres?

Awesome build. Does it matter what the amperage (6/10/15/30/60) of the strip connectors are?

I would think you could tune them by sliding each back and forth in the strip.

Is this antenna any good on gmrs

Hello, excellent video, thank you. I am new to this, can you confirm please if 144.500 is the Image Mode centre of activity, and can it be used for Simplex without causing interference? M7BAL

I want to add a pole for 220mHz could I just solder another wire below the first two?

I just picked it up from the video, but are those dutch wooden shoes??🤣🤣🤣👍🇳🇱

Was your Coffee Cold ? My Dad used to like bending things straight :-) Thanks for your help re crimper. I have ordered One

Gostei ver sua antena aqui simples muito funcional para vhf uhf

"Before I start this I'm going to get a cup of coffee." I thought, "My kind of fellow." Goes to a pod swill machine.....ugh. Good video at least.

Why half dipole vs full dipole? 2m isn't that long.

I'm going to the laundry😁

Normal? That's just a setting on the clothes dryer?! 😉

I made the antenna but put the element below 45 degrees swr optimal all band

Excellent video Mike! Thanks for putting it up there for us "newbies" and providing us with some no nonsense proof that these projects are doable ... we just need to get past our doubts and do it. I do have a question if you have a minute or two ... I'm currently in the process of doing something very similar; the plans call for 1/8' stainless steel rod for the two elements. My question is, would 3/16' brass rod or #2-AWG solid copper (commonly used as grounding wire for home electrical systems) be better options. Planning installing it in my attic (in case that matters). 73 Ben

Good job sir JZ13AAP

👍👏👏

@mike at 8:40 into the video and after 3 months we now know where the not normal disorder that you have comes from.... spraying gleu activator next to your coffee... 🤣🤣

Let's drink your coffee

COFFEE!!?? Where's the Indian Black Tea with Creame and Sugar with Kippers???

I think British Intelligence was trying to reach at the end of your video?, thanks

I started to make a antenna out of a coat hanger one time but I aborted instead.

When people just drop tools etc. on their bench for such an anoying noise, i end the video. Don't need that noise!

talk

I don’t understand this bull. Make the coffee, drink it and THEN, do the video.

It is NOT normal to put cream and sugar in your coffee. There is nothing like the real thing. Tattoos are also not normal, the Bible tells us that permanent body modifications are prohibited. You sound like you are in England. Wherever you are, is it legal to key your transmitter without identifying yourself? It is illegal in the U.S.

How easy was that?! Will be a bit long as the antenna starts at the coax split, so that middle spacing is also part of the radiating elements when measuring up. Now to raid the wardrobe (I assume I ignore the plastic ones 😮) 🧥 👗 👕👍🏻