3-Band Ham Radio Antenna: StarDuster Off-Centre Feeding Method

Didn't know that about the tangent curve for off center feeding. Good stuff Cal! I'll keep that in my back pocket for some future builds.

Just Stood mine up Friday, have my Stryker 955hpc hooked to it. its Fantastic. 686 in the Keystone State

Thats a pretty cool project Callum! 👍

Thanks Callum, more info to cram in my brain🧠 👍🤓

Going to be following this concept to see where it can go. Thank you.

In my area we have a local 10 meter net. Also, 11 meters (CB) is having a resurgence. At a hamfest last year I picked up a 43 foot (13 meter) fiberglass pole for cheap. So, I've been trying to figure out how to make an antenna that might work for both and use the pole to get some adequate height for local ground wave. The pole is fairly thin and flimsy up near the tip, so using it raise a conventional antenna wouldn't work. But you have given me some great ideas that might work for this pole. Thanks. And, if you decide to make a commercial version, I may be a customer.

That's really impressive and interesting, thanks. For a long time I've been wondering about something like this for 6m, 4m, 2, and possibly 70cm. The height would help a great deal. 👍😃

This inspired me to build a linked wire starduster for 10, 12 and 15. I use it on the expedition pole. Not as high as yours but it works!

Fantastic! I have wondered about running a vertical oriented dipole. Looks like I need to put some more effort into a build like this.

Reminds me of my old thunder pole

10 extra bananas! Imagine taking it to the beach 😮

I've been using the 'starduster' type for years made with wire and compared it with half wave vertical dipole and I have to say I'm heard more on the 'duster' but the half wave hears more. The 'duster' IMHO is much better for skywave propagation.

"suck it and see" is more accurately known as the "vacuo-visual technique"! BTW, maybe use some pipe lagging on any posts for radials, i know what dogs are like when they're just arsing about and not looking where they're going.

Hi Callum, nice video! Would it help the tri-bander to cut each radial a slightly different length, one for each band?

Hello Cullum, nice work. A question: how long, fold comprise, is the 15m elements? Vince

An end-fed half wave has a feed point impedance of 2450R. That's why folk use a 49:1 transformer to feed it. I prefer to use a 1/4 wave stub to match mine, which is then actually 2 double-Zepp as I have two 1/2 wave wires. Works great, but is single band.

Would be interesting to see how 2m and 70cms work on this, I have had quite a few 2m SSB contacts on the classic, I take it with a 10m element resonant on say 28.8 you would have the fifth harmonic at 144.300 for SSB and if you made the element resonant for the 10m FM portion you should be resonant in the 2m FM portion of the band. Great stuff Callum!

I had my version of this antenna up again a couple of weekends ago for its second test. All the elements were too long the first time so it was easy to shorten everything and I moved the feed point up the mast a bit because I could. I tried a thing were I used 6 radials, three were in between the other three that were attached to the guy cord. So the result was having 3 radials for 15m and 3 for 10m. 12m was just left to figure things out with whatever radial worked. All SWR curves showed very acceptable but 12m was still just a little high. The 10m radials were not even close to being 45 degrees and I may just scrap this whole idea of having 6 radials as it just adds weight and maybe for nothing. I'll be waiting for good weather and a day off to have a go again at round three of testing.

Cal, some areas in USA use 10 meter phone for local rag chew so height is important for ground wave and also to help get a clearer opening for DX. I do believe offering this version of the DX Commander could find a market, of course using the lower half for lower bands, CBers could also use it, especially when places like the UK, with their FM40, Germany with their lower 40 and New Zealand being at 26.220 up. All of these could be accommodated by adjusting length of radiator or adding a second or more radiators?

I wonder if it could work on one of those 7m (more like 6m usable) fishing poles for portable setups?