Diamond Antenna W-8010 and expanding it to all bands

Ben

I purchased the Diamond W series W8010 antenna and quickly put it together. The instructions were a bit hard to read as it was exceedingly small. However, I found someone who did a video on how to put it together. (this is not my video)

To me, an antenna is far more important than the power you put out and the radio you own. You can make a fantastic contact on an extremely old radio on a good well positioned antenna. But if you have a bad antenna and a fantastic radio, you may find it a bit harder.

Tip when tuning

The above video, and instructions will tell you when tuning the antenna to cut the tuning wires to length. Instead, I folded the tuning wires back on themselves towards the centre of the antenna. You may need to fold back a little more than you would have cut off, but if you ever need to move the antenna, you will need to re-tune it and you cannot re-tune it if you have cut the tunning wires off already.

So, for my antenna, all I did was set up the antenna where the wires were greater than 30 degrees from each other, and then bend the tuning wires on themselves with electrical tape. For one of the bands, I took the tuning wires completely off.

As my antenna is on the roof, I had to adjust and climb down many times and check the radio before trying again. At one stage I got a helper who stayed in the shack, and I stayed on the roof. However me being on the roof affected the antenna, even if I wasn’t near it. One of the bands wouldn’t tune in, but when I was sure it was right, I went off the roof and then it worked fine without me on the roof. Maybe my antenna doesn’t like the site of me!

Review of W-8010

This W-8010 antenna is a good cheap antenna that does a decent job. It isn’t hard to install and put together and covers several bands once you get it up and going. I was expecting it to take a lot longer than it did. It doesn’t need a huge mast and if you have the space, can be installed so it doesn’t look too bad either.

I managed to get this antenna working on all bands as advertised except 80m. I am still trying to get this band to work. I understand the antenna is very narrow on this band when I purchased it, so I expected tuning to be difficult. Given the antenna is above the house on new tiles, I didn’t want to climb on the roof to many times, so I tried several times while tuning the other bands, but ended up giving it away. Each time I get on the roof I adjust it a little, then try again, but I have almost given up and sure it won’t work right across the band either. 80m is my main issue with this band.

Expanding the W-8010 antenna to WARC Bands

After tuning in the antenna, I wondered if I could modify it to also be usable on the WARC bands. It was a little frustrating hearing people talk on the other bands yet couldn’t talk to them as I didn’t have a resident antenna.

I found some coaxial cable on the footpath on my morning walk. It was against a power pole and looked like the same cable used for pay TV which was above me at the time. I had a closer look at it, and noticed it was RG66 which is 75-ohm, but also had a strong wire wrapped in next to the coax. So, using this wire, I could hang it and put all the strain on the wire, and not the coax. Better still it was free!

So how much do I need for which band I hear you ask, especially since I am using 75-ohm not 50-ohm coax?

To calculate the lengths, you need is easy. Just work out what frequency you want to use. Try one in the middle of the range of the band you want to use. Then with this frequency, use the following formula:

Dipole total length in meters: 143 / frequency in MHz

This total length in the above is from point to point, so you need to half that for both sides of the dipole. But before you cut, don’t only measure twice (as they say in the building industry), but cut it longer than you need. It is a lot easier to trim the ends off than stick the ends back on! As I said earlier, I was using RG66 75-ohm coax, so these measurements may not be exact. But it also depends on how your antenna is mounted. For me, I added about a metre to each length so when I was on the roof, I knew it was about a metre longer than it should be. Depending on the band and length, you may want to leave more or less on it.

I first got it all working at a height I could reach, as I got sick of climbing up the ladder hundreds of times. Once it worked, I put it to the height I wanted, but it needed to be re-tuned again. Ah! If I had cut the wire, guess what, I would have had fun trying to extend my coax on the roof! You can see below how I folded the wire back on itself. As mentioned, this coax is RG66 and has a wire next to it. You can see this small wire in the photo that isn’t folded back and it supporting the coax on the nail. Don’t worry, this wasn’t my final setup, I was still tuning when I took the photo. It is secured a lot better than this now.

I noticed a lot of birds sat on some of my wires that were almost horizontal, and I was concerned their weight might break the antenna. About the same time, we were throwing out our old trampoline, so I kept some of the springs and have used them after the insulator and the mounting point. This may give the antenna a few more years of life hopefully.

Hope you enjoyed this read. What is your experience with Dipole antennas? What tricks have you learnt? I have been making antennas for some years, but really don’t think I am an experienced antenna builder. Please add your comments below so we can all learn from you.

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