a lightweight all band resonant portable dipole

Here is a quick and simple dipole that will get you all band coverage without needing to take an atu along and will roll up in your pocket. Below is a picture of a trap dipole which would do the same thing but is much more bulky and will need a good support to hold the weight of the traps,especially if its 5 or 6 bands.Basically its built much the same way as the trap dipole below but substituting the traps for a switch or a simple pig tail connection arrangement.This antenna should be coax fed for simplicity as trying to use ladderline would complicate matters on this particular example. It weighs vertually nothing and as stated needs no atu so bringing the total weight of things to be carried if out portable down.

Below shows a pig tail arrangement for band changing

Shown below is the pig tail for the dipole band change arrangement.You will see a simple piece of garden twine seperating the dipole. The section on the right is the 10m portion of the antenna terminating at the feedpoint.The section on the left is the next portion of the antenna.(in this case 15m). The next connection point along the dipole would be the 17m and so on. This antenna works well with no issues just make sure the pigtails are seperated properly when disconnecting as i did have slight interaction if they were too close. This was overcome by simply bending the pigtails back on themselves to seperate them as much as possible.

Example

Working from feedpoint.A wire 8'2" then a break for a pigtail connection,this is the 10m section.From there a wire 2'10" then another connection (15m).From that point a wire 1'9" then a tail (17m) ect remembering to take into account the whole length of the dipole already constructed when calculating the next section. A tip i found useful was to cut the sections of antenna slightly longer than needed then trim once the whole dipole was constructed.

In the field

I have used my dipole with the pig tail arrangement a couple of times while / portable using a 16 foot pole and convigured as an inverted v. Band changing isn't a hassle as it takes only a minute or two to collapse the pole enough to change bands and then slide back up. I used good quality twin speaker wire for this dipole and the finished antenna is cheap,works well with minimal set up time and takes up hardly any room in the rucksack. The feeder is simply the better quality rg58, this was because i have it handy and its cheap and light. The coax run is around 30 foot and with very little mismatch in the system i couldn't see any point using anything else.

Above is the center of the dipole. As you can see it all breaks down into small sections making packing just that bit easier. This also has the advantage that it may be used for other antennas as all elements are clip on. This center is used for the multiband dipole and also for an end fed with the center just at the back of the rig with the radiating element thrown up a tree or fence.The earth side is then used for a counterpoise wire or short wire/ground stake.It is also useful for the feedpoint of a ground mounted vertical.