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What are you using as the black mast?

Fan dipoles are fed with coax and can get real close to a 1:1 match without all the extra stuff or tuner. I bet you would gain 1 S unit in signal with a straight coax feed. Ladder line isn't always the lowest loss solution.

Thanks for the visit de KD5INM

Nice setup and a great little project! Have you done much on 40 or 80 meters? Is your long wire still up? KD9VAN

Any winher performance data?

I've been considering going to solar/battery completely. After watching your video, it might be this weekends project! Nice shack and the IC-705 rocks!

Nice emergency communication setup! Just be aware that when we HAMs display our callsigns on TH-cam, we are essentially giving any and all TH-cam viewers our full name and home address.

nice set up have the yaesu 710. almost the same thing. but 2 Dakota 10amp batterys 20 amps charge buy 110 v might change it for what you have thanks for the idea

Super cool out of the box ingenuity. Thanks for sharing

Hey Kevin, first time seeing you. Thanks for the detailed video of your setup. I just subscribed. I want to see a video description of your bicycle generator radio setup. That is super cool. Thanks again

Love the kitty photo bomb😆

Very excellent, my brother… I wish I didn’t have S5 to S7 noise floor at the house when I just run off a battery… Keep the smoke in what it needs to stay in. 73 man.

Nice little setup for qrp base station. I have go kit for my ft 818nd in a hardened knock off harbor freight pelican case. It works for me. Normally, I use 3 sla batteries, 12vdc 7 ah , Walmart specials for its power source. However, for my power sources in the house, I use the old fashioned iron core transformer power supplies, in this case both are Astron. But I do have two marine deep cycle batteries on trickle charging with 2 100 watt solar panels out side.

Nicely put together great video. Scott KF0HRF

Love the videos Kevin, always enjoy your time.

I love practical videos like this...telling us what you use, how it works, and why you set it up that way. Helps others make informed decisions about their use case and set up. Thanks Kevin.

Nice setup Kevin! I want to get a Buddipole Power mini 2. Just haven't needed/gotten to solar yet. 73!

Great job Kevin. Pretty cool!

Can you charge that Jackery with your Buddipole charge controller? Where did you buy your solar panel from?

Awesome setup! Simple electronics yet elegant appearance! Q- Why SLA battery vs LiFePo ?

Great setup!!!

Nice setup Kevin!

So kool Kevin!!! Wow I had not thought about the fan in my ps. Oh love the home wine making lights!!

What mikkifone ru using, clipped to your shirt.

Very nice and efficient. Mine looks like a rat's nest. Cleaning it up is on my to do list....sigh. Listen for you Sunday night...

You have the cleanest and most organized ham radio setup I have ever seen. You are an inspiration to many.

Thanks for the great video. I really like the way you tied off 20 and 40 M lines on this setup to keep everything looking and working great! How long in total time did this take you to setup?

Great setup Kevin, I have a bluetooth Victron solar controller that is half the price and electrical quiet that I can take out, a portable solar panel . VE1SK

Thanks for making contact with me using this dandy! Love how you are always working to improve your craft! You the man! 73🎉

That is a great setup, Kevin! The counter weights you put on look like they work really well. I really like what you built.

terrific work, my friend Kevin enjoyed the video fantastic 73 from kb2uew

Very good Kevin! Looks awesome, great build there my friend. Question before I go, how tall is your center support pole? . De John KD5INM

I would not rely on the pvc to support the antenna I would connect the guy ropes directly to the ends of each antenna wire. nice build ! I Have used fan dipoles for years and am working on a new one with traps for more band coverage. Also doing 50 ohm to a 1to1 balan at the antenna feed point would have less loss and less noise. WB0EMJ

So good Kevin!! 👍📻⚡️Tom - WA7FLY

Great job, enjoyed the video very much. Blessings and 73 Leo.

Hi Kevin....the new Fan Dipole certainly does work. I believe I've logged you twice so far while using it, and both times 100% copy with good audio at 5 watt levels. It's a winner! I would definitely seal up the copper feedpoint with some solder before too long to keep the corrosion away. 73 de Chris WA7RAR

Kevin how bout trying a beverage for receive? NJ2US has a few and might be able to provide info on his switch and setup.

Thanks for the informative video Kevin!

This is Leon, KC1LBL. Kevin, as we have discussed many times, I have for many years believed that for best results an antenna should be both physically and electrically balanced. That is, each wire leg should consist of the same length and orientation above ground, and the antenna should be fed at the exact center using balanced feed. That is, with equal and opposite (180 degrees out of phase) voltages to each leg. It’s kind of like how AC power is delivered to your house. They connect AC power to your house using 3 wires, a ground, and two 110 volt signals that are 180 degrees out of phase. Loads connected between either wire and ground get 110 volts. But when connected between the two 110 volt wires, because of those voltages are 180 degree phase difference, those voltages add together and the load gets 220 volts. And ground is not involved. A balanced antenna behaves similarly. I could be wrong, but it’s always been my belief that preserving proper balance best guarantees formation of proper radiation pattern. I believe you proved this to be true during your recent QRP contest where compared to other stations you actually made the most contacts. You didn’t win the contest outright because other stations earned multipliers, and that’s OK. But it’s important to realize that no other station working the contest under the same propagation conditions came close to your number of contacts. And since the contest required portable operation, most of those stations were using more convenient to set up end-feed techniques. In contrast, you set up a properly balanced antenna and blew them away. You even blew away CW stations that inherently have an advantage over SSB. Yes, SWR tells us that power is leaving the rig and is not being reflected back. But it doesn’t tell us how that energy is being radiated. If somehow there existed a magic set of eye glasses that would make our transmitted RF visible, I think we’d be surprised that end feeding not only loses power by dissipating it into the ground, but it also distorts the radiation pattern. I also think that the radiation pattern of coaxial fed dipoles gets distorted by the presence of the outside shield of the feed line, even if one installs a balun at the feed point. And how could we know? Going on the air doesn’t prove anything. My goodness, I’ve seen you make contacts using a shovel as an antenna. And your many QRP activities show that one can make contacts with even just a few milliwatts of power. The bottom line is, we can’t see the RF, so we don’t really know what the radiation pattern looks like. But of course we all want our radiation to be as efficient as possible. We want more than a few contacts. We want the most contacts possible. It’s hard to achieve perfect physical and electrical balance. You achieved it in the QRP contest by setting up portable in the middle of a corn field, away from objects that might distort the pattern. At home, you can’t do as well because the proximity of the house to one leg creates a slight imbalance. However, I feel that what you have constructed is the best you can practically do. I look forward to seeing whether or not over time you realize better performance with this new fan dipole. One thing for sure, during the last two QRP Sunday night events using your new fan dipole, I heard you for the first time in many months. I understand your efforts to trim each leg of your fan dipole to optimize SWR on each band. Having an antenna that has a naturally low SWR at the frequency of operation is more convenient. So go ahead and do that. And as you are discovering, it can be a challenge trimming so that those SWR notches are exactly at the frequency you want for each band. Still, I’m sure if you work on it you’ll eventually optimize it to your liking. However, from the point of view of radiation efficiency and radiation pattern, I believe it makes no difference at all. The tuner does the job of lowering the SWR for the rig and the balun properly converts from unbalanced to balanced feed. Ground is not involved. Each leg of the antenna is isolated from ground. Also, the feed line does not affect the radiation pattern because both wires of the ladder line pick up equal RF energy and naturally cancel each other out. It's true that if the impedance presented to the tuner is way off, the tuner might have to work a bit harder to achieve a perfect match, and in the process it might exhibit higher ohmic losses. So yes, further trimming might gain a few precious fractions of a dB. So again, go ahead and do that. I love the mechanical aspects of your project. It was all well thought out and works beautifully. Leon

Kevin your videos are always informative and well worth the time to view them. I always learn something useful. I consider it a good investment. Thanks. 73. N4LWT

Nice set up for NVIS if you could get it up higher you could get some amazing DX

Great antenna and suspension system! I use old timey window weights on a pulley for my tensioning on EFHW and G5RV! I'm considering building a 10m /6m fan dipole. This video gave me a lot of great ideas for construction! Thanks! ky4ej

Best wishes for an excellent harvest season

Really enjoyed hearing the how / process you used!

Nice work on the antenna Kevin! I hope it continues to work great for you! Thanks for the contact yesterday! 73!

I like the pvc pipe for spreaders.... ive also seen people use cat5 cable for cheap antenna wire

Thanks for sharing, great to see your ant. After 39 yrs and many ant, I've just found a keeper, a 20m elevated vertical with 4 radials. 73 brian zl3xdj.

Kevinnnnn!!!