Simple Ham Radio Antennas: A Ham Radio 10 meter ground plane antenna. Post #311.

Another great video tutorial from antenna guru Dave Tadlock. This time, Dave designs, builds, and uses a simple ground plane antenna for 10 meters. Although Dave says his design can be ground mounted, a true ground plane antenna is always elevated to decouple the radials from the actual ground to eliminate ground losses. Dave's instructions are clear, precise, and often humorous. I've built several ground plane antennas following Dave's lead. The hardest of the lot was for 40 meters. In order to get the radial system off the ground, I had to use a slingshot and a length of weighted nylon rope to shoot the vertical element to a branch about 40 ft/12.19 meters above ground. With the bottom of the vertical element at 7 ft/2.13 meters above ground, it was easy to attach four, sloping quarter wave radials to the coax connector and tie them off at pre-positioned stakes. It's a lot easier to build a 10 meter ground plane. If you chose a frequency of 28.400 MHz (in the Tecnician Class SSB segment of the band), the vertical element and its corresponding system of 4 sloping radials (about 45-degrees) would each measure 8.23 ft/2.51 meters. By placing this arrangement on a 20 ft/6.28 meter pvc mast, you would get the base of the antenna almost 3/8 wavelength above ground. This antenna provides excellent DX possibilities when propagation is favorable. Even on "bad" propagation days, this antenna will provide many local and regional contacts. Building antennas is fun and educational. Dave does a good job of explaining how this type of antenna works. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free email subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed. Until next time, Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM).