I do not have a lot of space for antennas. So i have to get creative when possible to be able to work the bands of interest for me at this time, 40 and 20m. I have a low slung dipole for 40m in the tiny space called our backyard. Which leaves doing something for 20m.
I have had this old station master CB antenna sitting in my workshop for a while that i planned to use on 15 or 10m. Well, nothing much is doing on either of those bands other than some E’s so i have reconfigured the station master into a 20m 1/4 wave.
Its about 4.5m to the base of the antenna and the 5m of radiator on top of that and 4 radials to bring the feed impedance up to 50 ohms.
The fact that the 2:1 bandwidth is 2mhz kind of tells me that i have made a high quality dummy load. I am still unconvinced that its not a dummy load even though it does radiate.
This is the FT8 map from today. It certainly hears better than the portable dipole and reports are about the same so it is doing something.
Not to be outdone, reverse beacon reports similar reports around the pacific region. The jury is still out and I might still yet pull it all apart and start again to see if i can get that swr bandwidth narrower. For now, its what I will be using on 20m.
