When setting up my 40 30 20 meter shortened vertical, I have found that its best to run the fishing pole through the center of the coil. This reduces bending and stress on the fishing pole. Something else I have done is I labeled the one end of the loading coil as “top”. This is a result of my putting the loading coil upside down a couple of times when setting it up.
At the bottom of the fishing pole I have a plastic box with a DIY 1:1 balun as shown in the photo below. The yellow wires are my two radials that clip on to the sides of the box. This setup makes it quick and easy to deploy the radials. I also have velcro straps coming off of the screws on the side of the plastic box. This wraps around the base of the fishing pole.
As stated earlier, inside the plastic box is a 1:1 balun. Here is the inside of the plastic box:
The balun uses RG-174 coax and is has 9 turns on a Type 43 ferrite core that has an O.D. of 0.825 inches.
Thanks for the inspiration. I’m new at this and EFHW has been my go-to antenna for the past couple years. A couple days ago I decided to give vertical another try, so I built a version of this using leftover #18 wire from Lowe’s. The coil is #20 solid, insulated electric pet fence wire wrapped around a scrap plastic tube that was originally a shipping package for a different antenna. With it hung from a 20ft telescopic flag pole, and after two tries making some tuning adjustments, contacted Austria on 20m from Virginia.
-Gary (K4GRK)
Wow! That’s great Gary! Glad it worked so well for you.
— Mike