hello Randy here k7a GE this video is to show you how to put together a simple 6 meter dipole antenna this video is part of my get on 6 series to get you on 6 metres easily because many of the radios now have 6 meter capability and I'm going to show you how to build a simple portable dipole antenna for 6 meters I'm not going to go into all the detail because I think once you see one example you'll be able to put one together yourself depending on your building skills one of the things that makes it easy about building a dipole is that you can feed it with coax so you don't need any fancy matching sections it's all fairly easy just take the coax and connect the center to one end of the dipole and the shield of the coax to the other part of the dipole antenna if we remember our formula for a length of a dipole you divide 468 by the megahertz that you want the antenna to be resonant for that will give you the overall length in feet so for 6 meters where we want to kind of operate is 50.1 to 5 50.1 to 5 this is the national calling frequency so what this is used for is that when the band may not be open that's the frequency you should listen on when the the band becomes open if you make a contact on there you really should move up the band so we want to be able to take and design the antenna to work basically a little bit above 50 dot 1 2 5 so if we plug in fifty dot one two five into the formula that means each part of the dipole is about four feet eight inches long so it's less than ten ten feet if we look at say midpoint up the band say 51.6 six the antenna becomes shorter it's four feet six point three inches on each each side so the antenna I built is out of the two pieces of aluminum tubing about a half inch in diameter I started off with each one five feet long you always want to cut them water so you can trim them to get down into the band I picked up a piece of Plexiglas at a local glass door for free and with various nuts and bolts and some u-bolts I basically built a center piece of for the dipole here's the center of the dipole I have a piece of Plexiglas and I have some bolts through the Plexiglas some quarter-inch bolts and I have wing nuts on there so I can take the elements off or at least one element off when I want to travel make it less than five feet instead of 10 feet long I have a couple u-bolts which I'll attach to a mask and I have my SLO 2:59 connector and here's the backside so basically the center pin of the coax connector goes to one element and the ground side of the connector goes to the other element and like I said again you could kind of build this Center part out of PVC tubing and just have some small PVC tubing for each element say 1/2 inch and just run some wire down the elements and you'd still have a dipole the tubing is what I had on hand so that's what I used piece of one-inch PVC tubing which I have slid down inside except inch and 1/4 tubing and I have the coax set up here I'm on today s Oh 259 connector so allows just a standard coax to be attached to the and to the antenna makes it easy I like to have all my antennas using PL 259 so I can carry multiple different lengths with me for various portable operations makes everything interchangeable so here I have it on my piece of tubing and I have I have a tripod light stand thing so I'm just going to set it up in the air here swing it around here now let's check to see if it's resonant to check the resonant and the tuning of the antenna I have been MFJ to 69 antenna analyzer you could also do this using NSW bridge or the SW indicator inside your inside your radio as you advance along in your hammer your career you'll start to collect various pieces of test gear and this is a handy one to have okay to use this you basically turn on you connect up the antenna to it has a band switch so you select the band I'm on the 27 to 70 megahertz because I'm trying to dial in 250 not one two five has a tune control so as I adjust that I can see the SWR dip and it's resonant at forty six megahertz which is not quite the right frequency it's quite a bit low which means the antenna is long and the antennas five five foot long on each side so now I need to trim it down and to bring it into resonance so now I get to shorten the elements get the hacksaw out and cut off a few inches on each end okay each element is five feet long so sixty inches the formulas show say that it should be four feet eight inches so at 56 inches here I'm going to cut this on each end and now for the other end okay I cut off four inches here let's see where its resonant now tuning for Less WR and it's showing 48.9 about forty nine Meg's here we can see the meter directly so I think I'm going to take another inch off okay let's see where its resonant now right there's minimum 50 point two nine two that will work so you think we want to be above fifty dot 1 to 5 let's also check the SWR up near the FM part of the band so that's up around 52 and a half there you go 52525 is where the FM simplex is and it reads 1.9 - which speeds I can use this on 10 on both side band as well as FM so here it is all trimmed out ready to work now you may ask why do I have the mass sticking out above the top well I have another intent I'm going to put up there well what goes on the top of all that is this this is a elk antenna it's a fairly compact really light it's 2 meters in 450 in fact you can use this to work the satellites so the PVC tubing isn't strong enough to support my arrow antenna like you've seen on the other video of the antennas portable it comes apart antennas or the elements unscrew just like on the arrow antenna so you can unscrew all the elements just rubberband it together just put it back together here this is a log periodic so I don't fully understand how this works on both bands I think probably it's a multiple of 450 for each of the element lengths there's two tubes that make up the log ray the coax connector on the end here the center connects to the top the shield connects to the bottom has this PVC piece here in the middle and it's a little except a one-inch piece of PVC tubing that's why I have a one-inch there this rotates so right now it would be going the top four horizontal if you wanted to use it for FM you can just rotate that and stick it on the top and work FM so here it is on top of my mass I just need to add a piece of coax so that's up here above my six meter dipole so now I'm all ready to go work portable on 6 - and four-forty the elk antenna has enough bandwidth so I can work a sideband parts of the band so I'm all set for it for three bands with a portable operation probably the safe thing to do is to run a couple pieces of light rope from the six meter antenna out to some steaks so this whole thing doesn't blow over okay so I showed you how to build a simple dipole shows you how I put mine together basically anything with a couple pieces of wire or tubing start off there about five feet long trim it down you can use an SWR bridge with your radio I'm going to make sure if you're doing it that way you set your power down low on the radio and do it very quickly just pick a frequency key up adjust the SWR four forward go to reverse read the SWR and on key and make a few notes as you change different frequencies to see where your resonant again I made my die pot off some aluminum tubing that I happen to have laying around you can use PVC like I said some half-inch pieces and a tee and just run some wire down and if you don't want to use a coax connector you just solder the coax on run a length out and plug it into the radio at pretty easy to build it will work with the contest there would be a lot of stations on they'll be looking for you so put this together go up to a hilltop in your area and see what you can work then this antenna makes it easy to transport you can break it apart in half it's only five feet long with some tubing you can lash it on the roof rack of your car and go up to a hilltop and have fun seventy-three have fun building your antenna look for you on six meters Randi Kaye 7 8g