Homemade Antennas

Here are some descriptions and photos of some homemade antennas.

Homemade Endfed Antenna

Some photos of a homebrew endfed antenna installation are shown below. The antenna is roughly 125 feet in length and operates from 80m to 10m with the aid of an antenna tuner.


Mounted matchbox with endfed antenna	RF choke installed near feedpoint	Antenna wire suspended in a tree

A plot of the resulting SWR across the HF bands is shown below (thanks to K8QS for lending an antenna analyzer):

The following plots show the SWR on 80m as the length of the antenna was trimmed in stage a several feet at a time. Moving left to right, one can see the antenna gradually getting better tuned for the 80meter band as the length in shortened.

Here are some photos I took of the different stages in the build of a matching transformer for an end fed antenna. The windings had 2 primary windings and 14 secondary windings yielding a 7:1 turns ratio, and hence a 49:1 impedance ratio (reflected from secondary to the primary side).

Magnet wire and 2 type 43 toroid cores	Core Winding: primary: 2 turns (bifilar); secondary: 14 turns
Adding SO-239 connector and a cap	Final matching transformer for an end-fed antenna<

Homemade Satellite Antenna

Pictured below is a homebrew satellite yagi antenna. The antenna was constructed by one of my students using PVC piping and segments of a tape measure for the elements.

“tape measure” antenna