w9uum.com - 80M Dipole

80M Rotatable Dipole
If you look closely at the picture you will see a wire dipole hanging off the tower. It’s a Spi-Ro LS-80K limited space 80-meter wire dipole. Because I live on a small city lot and the trees are not in the perfect locations I asked myself how could I get that antenna higher? This is what I came up with.

This is a 10 foot piece of 2” fiberglass piping with ¼” wall thickness. It is mounted to a 12” x 15” x ¼” aluminum mast plate. Also mounted on the mast plate is the Spi-Ro PB-1C balun.

This is a 6” x 6” x ¼” aluminum truss plate. I used 5/16” double braid Dacron/Polyester rope for the truss supports.

Mounted on each end of the 10-foot piece of fiberglass piping is a 32-foot fiberglass windsock pole. The wire from each leg of the dipole is inside the fiberglass poles.

This is the Spi-Ro LC-80 antenna shortener. It reduces the overall length of the antenna by 40%.

This is also where I decided to attach the truss rope. It is approximately 25 feet from the mast pipe. I may have to come up with a better design for this part in the future.

This is me attaching this sagging thing to the mast pipe.

From end to end it is about 70 feet long.

It looks pretty straight. The big question is how will it hold up?

A special thanks to Rich KB9RNO who helped me test and install the antenna and to Jeremy Southworth who stayed up until midnight to help assemble it.