About ten years ago, one of the guys in my General Class course, called and asked if I’d like to see his new Buddipole, and oh, by the way, could I bring over my antenna analyzer? When I got over there, he had the Buddipole mounted on a tripod, much the same way as it’s mounted in the picture at right. (Being in Michigan, however, we didn’t have an ocean view and palm trees swaying in the breeze.)
We connected up the antenna analyzer, but no matter what we did, we couldn’t get a good match on 20m. This was puzzling to me, as there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of hams out there that are very successful using Buddipoles in this configuration.
I then suggested that we try one of the Buddipole elements in the vertical position, and operate it against a full, quarter-wavelength counterpoise. I had brought some wire along for just this purpose. We cut it, connected it, and voila, we had a good match.
What brought this all back to mind was that on Monday, another friend called me and asked if I could bring over my antenna analyzer to make some measurements on a dipole that he was attempting to make using a couple of MFJ 30m ham sticks that he bought at Dayton. Although the ham stick is designed to be a vertical antenna, MFJ sells a bracket that supposedly allows you to use two of their ham sticks as a dipole, much like the Buddipole. He told me that no matter what he tried, he couldn’t seem to get the SWR down.
Before going over there, I found an item on reddit that I thought might help him. I emailed this to him, but he replied that he tried all of the suggestions, but “still no luck.”
So, last night, I went over to his house. He had disconnected one of the ham sticks, and when I connected the analyzer to it, I got a reading between 2.5:1 and 3:1. I suggested that we try connecting a wire counterpoise to it, but he was hot on getting the dipole configuration to work, so we screwed in the other element. Whoa! The SWR jumped up to 8.5:1.
We buzzed out the connections to make sure that there were no shorts and that one of the ham sticks was connected to the center conductor of the coax, and that the other ham stick was connected to the shield. We also moved the mast away from the house. Neither of these had any affect on the SWR.
At this point, he decided just to return the ham sticks to MFJ. Even so, it bugs me a little that we couldn’t get this to work. I’m wondering if any of you might give us a little insight as to what we’re doing wrong. It doesn’t seem like it should be so complicated, but as I’ve said before, I’m certainly not an antenna expert.
Dave New, N8SBE says
No clue, but I have two 75 meter ‘sticks’ that were left from a couple of Valor/Proam AB-5 HF mobile antennas that I lost on the highway somewhere between here and Montana. I had used them on my Volvo Turbo station wagon, mounted on a trailer hitch mount, which put at least one horizontal ‘rubber ducky’ element a few inches over the rear roof area. That band wouldn’t resonate, but the others were deemed OK at the time.
The design was a vertical mast with a triangular milled piece on top that had rubber-ducky type resonators for 10, 15, and 20, and then a coil with a stinger whip that screwed in the top, either one for 40 meters or one for 75 meters.
During the day on my cross-country trips to Montana, I’d keep the 40 meter coil on the assembly, and kept the 75-meter one in the back of the station wagon. Sometime after dark, if I felt like pulling over someplace, I’d swap out the 40 meter coil for the 75-meter coil. As often as not, the weather was really cold (we drove out to Montana for Christmas usually, so December in North Dakota was cold, to say the least), and I wouldn’t bother swapping coils, and just ended up turning off the HF radio when 20 and pooped out for the day, and 40 filled with shortwave broadcast.
The really nasty problem with the AB-5 was that it used a brass 3/8″ x 24 mount, and it was heavy enough that it would regularly strip the threads out, and disappear someplace in the wilds of North Dakota. I’m sure that whoever ended up running over it in the dark was not pleased.
After losing the antenna twice, I quit messing with it, and eventually moved to screwdriver-type antennas (that’s another long story, I’m afraid). What I did end up with though, was two of the 75-meter coil and stinger-whip assemblies. I had toyed with the idea of getting one of those dipole whip brackets just to see what would happen, but never got around to it.
If you’d like to borrow them, be my guest. They are taking up room in my garage.
Vance says
I use a Buddiepole for portable operations, so I’m pretty comfortable with mine. Technically, the way the manual has you set the taps, the buddipole is not a true dipole, but an off – center – fed dipole. Sometimes if I get the dip where I want, but it isn’t as low as I want, I shorten one side and lengthen the other side by the same amount, to find the spot that is closer to the magic 50 ohm mark. Might be worth a shot!
Phil Stephenson says
I recently decided to get two MFJ sticks and configure them as a dipole but in a vertical position. It works well on 40M but as expected they aren’t broad tuned. Then I tried a pair of 20M sticks in the same configuration and with a Rig Expert I saw a resonant frequency of about 10Mhz. there just was enough adjusting the ferrule or pruning that was going to get me to 14Mhz. It just wouldn’t tune.
I decided to test each stick as a whip alone. Since it was on a pole and needed a counterpoise I attached 16 feet of stranded wire to the ground side and immediately the resonance changed to just under 14Mhz and it was possible to tune the individual stick. I then tested the other 20m stick in the same configuration with the counterpoise and it was resonant at 7.8Mhz! (and no, I didn’t mix up a 20M trap with a 40M trap). MFJ will replace this 20M stick. When I receive it I will be interested to see if the two sticks configured as a dipole will tune or if I’m better off with one stick and a counterpoise.
Eric Hancock says
Now I’m curious Phil did the replacements work?
Richard Hibbert says
My mfj ham stick dipole was a disaster too. I busted one in accident fall off roof. as a vertical with counterpoise results under testing but at 10 feet resonance is 13.985 swr 1.6:1 and reactive might be due to stucco mess of a house, Buddipole best vertical unless out away from tall buildings. they do work but mfj another issue
Kenneth Lee says
I have used older Lakeview ham sticks, I notice in their manual you are to place a capacitor between the whip and ground or use a loading coil. I am now curious what adding this capacitor would do with your MFJ whips. Get manual here; http://www.radiomanual.info/schemi/ACC_antenna/Lakeview_Hamsticks_HF_antenna_user.pdf
Kelly says
I realize this thread is old, old, old, but you don’t mention anywhere trimming the length of the wire whip on each stick. Just today I bought two 40 meter sticks and used the MFJ connector to make a dipole. With a crappy location and only about feet off the ground I was able to get the thing to below 1.5:1 at 7.05 MHz.
Adjusting the whips to be fairly short brought the SWR way down, but also watching to make sure the feed line was coming down as close to perpendicular as possible made a big difference.
Dan KB6NU says
Thanks for the input. It’s never too late to comment on a post here. My friend abandoned this project, but I’m sure there are other guys out there who appreciate your comment.
Markus says
Well, time went by. But nevertheless the issue should be solved….
I found a helpful link at “survivaltech nord”, OH8STN. He had to do the puzzle with two super antenna sticks.
To make it short: One side must be detuned a bit compared to the other side….
You can find the details here:
http://oh8stn.org/blog/2017/04/21/super-antenna-mp1c-horizontal-dipole-troubleshooting/
Enjoy !
Markus
Chuck KD9KEL says
I have two 20 meter MFJ sticks in their dipole adapter mounted vertically and it works great. It doesn’t have to be high. The tip of the bottom element can be 1-5ft off the ground. The problem Ive seen in pics of these getting high swr is that people are letting the coax droop down close to the lower element. It has to come off at 90 degrees from the feedpoint and not just a couple ft. Mine goes 10ft+ before dropping. Ive also got a coax choke of about 5 turns at 4″ diameter close to the feed.
Steve says
Way late to the party but I have good results with two 20 meter MFJ hamtennas mounted on the MFJ dipole mount oriented vertically. The coax comes off horizontally a few feet. The antennas are adjusted to the same length for lowest SWR at about 14.225 MHz. I have pictures on my QRZ page. 73 K6ITR
David Fellmet. AE0DF says
Just curious if anyone has tried the MFJ-2100 with the Mounting tube in a position perpendicular to the support mast? My intention would be to position the 80 meter hamsticks in the horizontal plane and the 20 meter hamsticks vertically. This would allow for NVIS operation on 80 meters and better DX propagation on the 20 meter sticks. The other two sets of sticks would be on 45° angles but seldom used by me.