End Fed Half Wave Antenna

One poject I started in Jan 2020 is a 49:1 balun. I was looking for a quick simple easy antenna I can use while portable, camping, etc and did not need a tuner and was low SWR. I was not really looking at multi band as most times while portable and camping its short periods of time and sticking to 20M so thats where I concentrated.

First is building the balun, I got a hold of enamled wire and 100pf capacitor, also worth noting is having a capacitor that is also rated at least 10 kilovolt. More the better!. You also need a torroid core. I used 2x240-43 stacked to allow more power. Feel free to use just one if you are going to use lower power. Take 2 lengths of wire. At first you will twist the two together and make two loops around the torroid core. After two loops one wire comes out from the torroid and the remaining wire makes another 12 turns around the torroid. For a total of 14. Use the following as a guide for wiring it all up.

Take your time make the turns as close to the torroid as you can. Connect your capacitor to both pigtails of wire (to shorten it out). The single wire goes to the center pin of the coax connector. The other (the one that has the 2 wires twisted together) goes attched to the shield / ground of the coax connector. I started with 34 ft of wire and started trimming until best swr. I got mine down to 1.2:1 at 14.0 up to 1.5:1 at 14.350 which is very forgiving and usable without a tuner.

I wasnt too critical to my housing as its not permantly outside but below are my results.