Getting the 80-meter Loop Back in Shape

Hey—after lots of motorcycle posts, here’s one on ham radio.

Argh! I have an 80-meter full-wavelength horizontal loop antenna and it came down in some recent winds. It’s fed atop my roof on a short mast, which also holds up a 2-meter-and-up discone. I feed the loop with ladder line and use an antenna tuner.

Well, I can’t claim to be the best antenna technician. I just threw some chunks of wood over trees using white nylon parachute cord and yanked the corners of the antenna up that way. The constant chafing of one of the trees on the cord finally frazzled the cord into nothing, and down it came.

So, I rejiggered the corner insulator locations and got it up again (more chunks of firewood over trees). Just for kicks, I thought I’d do some measurements to see how close to a square I came. The answer is a lot closer than I expected. I used a nifty tool at mathopenref.com to create a drawing with the angles right, then got out my ruler and calculator to figure the side lengths. All around, not too bad, considering what I have to work with as far as antenna mounting points.

The whole thing slopes down to the east, so I suppose that affects the radiation pattern. I originally put it up for NVIS local communications, and it works well for that when conditions are good, but it also works on all bands with a tuner. It’s been my main HF antenna for some time now, and it looks like it will continue in that capacity.

I really do wish I had some real poles for the corners. I’d love to create a 160-meter full-wavelength loop. I have a acre here, so it would fit if I had something to hold it up.