@VK1DA and @VK1AD have been testing 2m hourglass antennas for use during the 2026 SOTA 2m/70cm SSB/CW challenge.
I knocked one together yesterday, using what was at hand. The antenna showed no movement on the FT817 SWR meter when set up on my 6 m pole in the backyard. The total wire length is about 414 cm. I’ll tune the antenna for 144.2 MHz using a VNA later this week.
The construction varies from John K4ERO’s version, in that it has a shallow inverted vee at the top, and, unintentionally, a vee at the bottom as well. My end game is to mount the SO239 on the plastic box with the clip-on ferrite inside and bring the two wires in horizontally along the spreader.
The element is 26 AWG hookup wire.
I made contact with Glenn @VK3YY when he was at VK3/VC-028 Dingo Ridge, about 25 km away, and the performance of the hourglass was very similar to my 5 element Yagi mounted at 3m AGL.
More field testing once I have the feed arrangement sorted.
