J Pole on 27mhz?

Hi all
I’ve recently been getting obsessed with wire antennas mainly for the low cost and stealth element. 

Has anyone built a wire JPole or slim Jim for 27mhz and what were the pros and cons?

How did it perform?

I thought I’d ask before I start cutting and sticking stuff, including me!

Many thanks

John

Hi John,

The ubiquitous J-Pole is an antenna often extolled as a 'beginners' antenna and is actually frustratingly far from such. (Usually praised for 2m VHF operations.)

Dimensions and materials used can become quite critical (especially at VHF but even so at 10/11m) with it also being sensitive to it's surroundings. It looks easy to simply 'slide' the feed line up/down the 1/4 wave matching stub for good SWR but this can be difficult with a simple wire constructed arrangement. You can guarantee a 'calculated' feed point measurement will only ever be in the ball park if at all but who knows, you may get lucky.

For CB/11m operation it's going to be almost 8m (26 foot) long and you may experience difficulty mounting it especially when constructed from wire.

There are far easier antennas to make such as the common dipole and for end fed solutions the shrouded dipole or otherwise known as the T2LT. The latter can be mounted to any non-metallic pole you'd like for erecting and I've even seen examples where they're hung up in trees etc.

Never wanting to put someone off from experimenting feel free to have a go at it but just be aware that it might all become a bit frustrating.


Someone's bound to come along and claim that they're the "best-thing-since-sliced-bread" but if you've never seen sliced bread before everything is amazing.
(Heck, even a wet finger in the back of your radio will pick up signals but doesn't make for a good antenna!)


Hope that helps.


All the best,
Victor

Will be interesting to know how you get on keep us updated will you.
I have the T2lt and a telescopic pole for 11m with some waste pipe clamps well that's what i know them as fastened to the side of the shack.
I just drop the pole in the clamps hook the T2lt on the tip and push it up and it does well did work well but not used it for some time now.
Can't beat playing with a bit of wire lol.

 
Thanks guys!

Yes I’ll let you know how I get on. 
As Victor says it’ll be a whopper!  I’ve a 12 meter pole so I should be able to get it in the air but a none windy day maybe in order!