Light at the End of the Tunnel?

[MM0FMF]

Here’s the link to the description of the antenna Brian refers to:

Simple 3 band vertical (20m/17m/15m)

The reason for making this antenna was the desire for a vertical (hence DX-ish) antenna that would cover at least 20m that would fit on my 5m fishing pole. A 1/4wave GP wont fit onto a 5m pole as the radials need to slope down at 45degs from the feed, with a 5m radiating section, the 5m pole is too short. Reading assorted reports over the years the common feature was that a few elevated radials seem to have lower loss than laying a few on the ground. If you can bury a huge great mass of wire the…

I made it originally in November 2011 and redesigned it in early 2012. It’s how I made a SOTA lightweight clone of a Buddistick from Bud’s own article. I’ve been using it on 20/17/15 since then. It seems to work. It’s not going to be as good as a 1/4GP. But as that article describes, it does 20/17/15 and fits on a 5m mast. That was a major requirement, fit a 5m mast. My 60/40/30 dipole is designed for a 5m mast as well. So the antennas tune up and work on such a mast. I altered the coil and can get 30m now. Shorter top sections allow 12/10m. You need at leat a 7m mast for a 20m 1/4GP. In fact, the reason we had a 12m challenge a few years back was primarily because a 12m 1/4GP fits perfectly on a 5m mast. The sunspots were peaking so 12/10 were open plenty of time but12m was chosen over 10m as it’s less commonly used and fitted my preferred mast size!