Ultralight Dipoles

I was thinking about building an ultralight dipole based on a BNC connector for portable operations with the goal of leaving it in a go bag of sorts. I made it for the ever versatile 30M band, eyeing up digital modes and CW.

The Build

I cut the speaker wire for 30M and soldered a leg to a BNC connector center and ground strip. I took some light para cord for a hanging loop and put some shrink wrap on to hold it. I also dropped a dollop of hot glue for extra reinforcement. I then shimmied down a piece of marine grade glue lined shrink wrap to hold everything together. Super simple.

Tuning

I set it up in my nearby testing area. I originally had it too high for my leg supports so the geometry was really wonky. I lowered the height a little bit and widened out the inverted v which made everything nicer. I trimmed for resonance and was pretty stoked with how it turned out.

Testing

I set the antenna up in a different spot and ran a 1 watt, 20 minute WSPR test. The dipole legs were oriented North-South so that it had East-West propagation. I normally try to deploy them in the inverse to hit the US, but this worked really well. You can see a bit of a null into NM and Texas. I got some nice NVIS contacts as well as the usual omni directional spread. Always fun to tag Alaska too.

Testing Stats

Contacts: 326

SNR

SNR Min	-30
SNR Max	+24
SNR AVG	-13

Distance

KM Min	202
KM Max	2,952
KM AVG	1,849

Conclusion

This is actually a pretty sweet, simple and economical build. You could easily swap out the BNC for an SO-239 instead. For the finishing touches I put some more paracord loops on the ends of the dipole legs with shrink wrap for an insulated hanging loop.

73 de VE5REV