Tech Forum

I have two slinkys that I've used as a dipole for 20-80 meters, with a tuner. If you make a coil with the wires close together, you have an inductor. So the larger you make the loops and the further apart the loops are from each other, the lower the inductance will be. That said, I don't think you'll really want to do that with regular copper wire. It might work with copper coated steel wire, but I've never used it, so I don't know. On the other hand, a slinky is not made of copper, it is probably some kind of steel. You can buy the original slinky on-line or at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, that's where I got my two originally.

If you do try to build your own, then try using the length you want for the longest wavelength you want to transmit on and add some extra. Then make a coil with large loops, 3" diameter or larger, and space them apart about an inch or so. If you do not want to use a tuner then you'll probably have to add some capacitance to it at the center of the dipole and this value will change depending on the transmitting frequency. Or, perhaps cutting wire off to make it shorter will be all you need to do. Buying a tuner makes using strange things as antennas much easier.

I hope that helps.