Want to try 6 meters? It does seem to open sporadically with some consistency in the Spring and Fall. With FT8 being all the rage, weak signal work is within everyone’s reach. This means you can get on 6M with a marginal antenna and do quite well. Please, lets scrap the polarization talk. Once a signal heads toward the ionosphere polarization tends to get scrambled. Just what you have at the end of your coax, horizontal or vertical no longer matters. Local / repeater work is a different story but we’re talking DX here, well at least out of our grid square and hopefully out of the state!

The answer: VK2ZOI’s Half Wave Flower Pot Antenna ( Link ). Scroll down for the 6 M version.

I built one a few years back without success and now realize I used RG8x where the design is for RG58, big velocity factor difference. Lesson learned, if you use someone else’s design, follow it to the T.

An exact replica of the VK2ZOI design was made and you know what? It works. I’ve made over 25 6M FT8 contacts in the last 3 days. Stations all over the Midwest, South and Northeast.

Take a serious look at the design. Convert the metrics into inches and put it together.

USA Parts:

  • RG58 solid dielectric.
  • 10 foot of 2 inch PVC pipe.

Construction:

  • My antenna is NOT inside the PVC pipe but hanging from a fiberglass pole.
  • The coil is wrapped around a 1 foot piece of 2 inch PVC.
  • Everything is held together with blue painte’s tape. I find this a good tape for experimenting. Easy to change and when a final design is found, rip it off and use something more permanent.

Results:

6M QSOs, when the band is open. Don’t expect to work Outer Mongolia on 10 watts. Crank up the power, 50 to 100 Watts. FT8 is a weak signal mode, NOT a low power mode. Turn on WSJT-X and fill in your log.

The tuning is not as good as advertised. I get an SWR low in the 1.7 range around 50.3 MHz using the dimensions shown and adding about 1 inch to the top radiator. If I had an antenna analyzer perhaps this could be fine tuned. Anything under 2:1 is not worth fixing.

I apologize for the non-glamorous post but I wanted to share this design and not steal JC’s design. While I am not a fan of  FT8 it is the perfect mode in a situation like this.

73 and happy hunting