How Long Should my Dipole Antenna be? CB or Ham Radio

As an old CB guy, I'm glad you don't look down on us. In the 1970s I worked out of my parents' garage. Spoken almost every state in the USA, Australia, South America, the Netherlands Antilles. And of course Europe, especially Italy, they were called "spaghetti eaters" :-) During a winter's day on FM I had contact with several cbers from the English islands. Because there were so many I said that anyone who could hear me I would send a QSL card. I shouldn't have done that, as a young guy it cost me a lot of money, but a promise is a promise :-)

Nice One .... I am building CB dipole great information thanks 73's

My first antenna I built was the dipole for 20 meter band. Didn't use a matching transformer. Put it up at 3 meters high and first contact was New York, USA with 50 watts. Good educational video Cal

This really speeded up my tuning of a fan dipole I made this afternoon. Thanks 73 de John G0KTW

Thanks Callum, learned the calculation for a dipole (300/Mhz=Metres) a year ago but didn't realize the correlation with the speed of light, thanks for the extra info.

Great video Cal, a complex subject, clearly explained in terms we can all understand! In a nutshell you nailed it in one! Jim M7BXT

A grand explanation, Callum.

Thanks, I'm going to try one soon.👍

Cracking video Cal - that hit the spot!

Brilliant tutorial cheers buddy 73's from Ireland

Great help I need to make one for 6m. Have fun on holiday 😎

Top notch stuff as always Cal

Thanks.... still learning...keeps the head young 😉🤙🙏

Amazing video, thank you you made it so easy to understand, no geek speak, wow going to build my own dipole.

Wonderful! Thank you!

As a software engineer I've found that I make things complicated because I understand the intricacies of what I'm doing, so much so that I'm thinking 4 steps ahead of myself when I really need to be staring at the immediate problem. I end up trying to solve future problems that don't yet exist instead of addressing the issue right in front of me.

Good refresher course! I need to know where to get a drone with the delivery/drop claw so I can hang a wire across the top of two oak trees that would be perfect for the 40-meter band at a 1/4 wavelength height! Thanks, Cal or anyone else in advance for any information you may provide.

Really helpful video 👍 I'm trying to decide between a dipole, a butterfly terminated dipole, a doublet, or an end-fed long wire, for an attic antenna for 11m. Any thoughts or help appreciated 🙏

The engineer does the math and designs the size. The technician takes the result and trims it with test equipment for a 1:1 match. I've built antennas for 72 MHZ for hearing assist. Cut to length, trimmed the elements and adjusted the gama match for great performance. Currently working on a 92 MHZ antenna for an event, and some 640 MHZ antennas for wireless microphones for longer range for the event. Prefer a gama match instead of end fed due to the need for a balun to prevent power on the outside of the coax, and grounded element designs are much more immune to lightning damage.

Well Sir, I’ll stick to my method of finding out the length of a dipole because it’s much simpler and I don’t have to care about the speed of light. Divide 468/f and you’re done, this gives you the result in total feet and then divide by two. 468/ 27.35 = 17.1115 =17.112feet = 5.21m / 2 = 2.60meters per side.