THE 20 METER "WONDER BAR
ANTENNA"
This 20 meter Wonder Bar antenna
project is based on the work by
W5ECP
and uses portions of
his article, re-edited, and was published in QST,
1957.
The Wonder Bar antenna is basically
a broadband "fan" or bowtie type antenna which is about half the size of a normal length dipole and is
very suitable for 20 meter operation. Being half the length of
a normal dipole makes this antenna a good candidate for restricted
space applications. According to the article, it performs well for
it's size and has a broad, low swr range over about 100khz according
to the graphs in the article.
The antenna is bi-directional
with very little radiation off the ends making it suitable for use
with a rotor.
If you have seen the 10 Meter Wonderbar
project on this web site, then as a comparison of size, the 20
meter Wonderbar, is about 2 times larger
overall.

20 Meter Wonder Bar antenna (not drawn to scale)
This article should not be considered
here as a "construction article", but can be used to give you a
better understanding of how the antenna is designed. The final
actual "construction" of the antenna will have to be left up to your
ingenuity.
referring to the original
article if you can find it will be very
helpful!
As you can see in the drawing above,
the overall length from end to end is about 16 feet or half of the
normal length of a 20 meter dipole. The drawing is meant to be an
"electrical" drawing rather than a "physical" one.The "active"
elements are colored in orange including the main winding in the center. The black
coupling winding, not shown with all it's windings, is centered
over the main winding and is not offset as shown in the
drawing.
The length from the outer end of the main
winding to the outer edge of the 2 "arms", is equal to
about 1/8 wavelength at 20 meters. So what we have here is 2
main conductive "arms" on each side of the main winding, connected
with wire from top to bottom making a sort of triangular delta
loop on each half of the antenna with the winding (coil) in the
center and then the coupling loop is wound centered over that
main winding.
The junction of each half of the
antenna at the center of the antenna is soldered to the end of the
main winding and one side of the antenna is used to connect the swr
tuning tap point. An ohm meter would show a direct "short" from one
side of the antenna to the other half....this is normal with this
type of design due to the coil being in the center in
series with each half of the
antenna!
A workable
"formula" can be derived for the element lengths as
follows:
The original design center frequency was 14.15mhz
in the 20 meter band.
1/8 wavelength = 234 / 2 = 117
117 / 14.15mhz = 8.26 feet per arm. (14.15mhz was the
original design frequency in 1957 article in QST) This will be very
close for experimental purposes and any small difference can be
adjusted using the tap point.
The article and resulting research
did not reveal the "angle" of the arms relative to any reference
point but did say that the arms are "spread" so that the ends would
be 5 feet apart. This does not exactly agree with the length
of the connecting wire in the drawing above, between the arm
ends, so it would be assumed that the wire length connecting the
arms would be at least 5 feet! It is also assumed that the
angle would not be extremely critical. The main elements were made
from aluminum tubing in the original article published in QST. 3/4
inch aluminum tubing was used in the original.
Coil winding and tap point details.
The main coil consists of about 30 turns, close
wound, of #12 insulated wire on a suitable 1 1/4 inch diameter
non-conductive form such as Lucite, wood, PVC, etc.
The
coupling coil consists of 5 turns of #12 insulated wire wound over
the center of the main coil. It's ends are attached to the coax
center and shield as shown in the drawing.