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Squalo antenna for 6m Search

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Posted on 27 April 2011 by Ernest

Introduction

Adri PA0RDA, a friend of me, is trying to do some DX on 6m for a while now. His antenna
position is very poor: he lives in the bottom flat of a 5-floor building. He has a balcony on
the rear (south) side, but high buildings are very close, he has no direct sight in any Important notice
direction. At the balcony he has a Diamond V2000 vertical antenna for 6/2/70, and an MFJ This is my personal website, it reflects my perso
loop antenna for 15-40m. The 6m band is his most popular one, since he get best results opinion and has no relation to my job or
on this band. However, since most DX on 6m is horizontally polarized, he needed a whatsoever.
horizontal antenna. I remembered an all-direction horizontal antenna made by Jan
PA3EGH (one of the members of the local radio club). So I contacted him, and he pointed An appropriate amateur radio license is required
me at his website. It was the “Squalo” antenna, or square halo. In fact, it’s just a square own and/or build and/or use the transmitters
folded dipole. It radiates in all directions, with -4dB gain on the sides (compared to the described on this website, depending on local
front and back side). regulations.

All content on this website is licensed under a

Construction Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4
International License.

This is a copy of the design, originally published by Jan PA3EGH:

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The original design. Please note that all measurements are center to center.
vertical yagi

All measurements in the original design are given in inches, so let’s convert them to mm first:
Archive
August 2019 (1)
Inch mm July 2019 (1)
June 2019 (1)
August 2018 (1)
30,5 775
September 2017 (1)
March 2017 (1)
2,5 64
December 2016 (2)
December 2015 (3)
14,0 356 October 2015 (1)
April 2015 (1)
27,56 700 February 2015 (2)
January 2015 (1)
5,512 140 December 2014 (1)
November 2014 (2)
1,575 40 October 2014 (1)
September 2014 (1)
August 2014 (3)
I used 12mm copper pipe for the “loop”, RVS metal strip for the shorting strap and feed point, and a small piece of RVS
July 2014 (1)
tube for the isolator.
The antenna is very easy to build. The website with the original design provides enough information on how to build it. June 2014 (3)
The pictures suggest some construction details: May 2014 (2)
April 2014 (2)
March 2014 (4)
February 2014 (2)
January 2014 (2)
December 2013 (5)
November 2013 (2)
February 2013 (1)
February 2012 (1)
January 2012 (1)
December 2011 (1)
November 2011 (2)
October 2011 (1)
April 2011 (1)
February 2011 (1)
January 2011 (1)
December 2010 (1)
Feed point, shorting strap and mounting The shortening strip. By moving this strip, the dipole October 2010 (1)
will become longer or shorter, resulting in a different September 2010 (1)
resonance frequency. August 2010 (2)
July 2010 (2)
February 2010 (1)
March 2009 (1)
May 2008 (2)
July 2007 (1)
July 2006 (1)
December 2005 (1)
October 2002 (1)
August 2002 (1)

Feed point, by moving these you will change the

impedance of the antenna.

Testing

I don’t have any equipment for 6m, except a small handy (Kenwood TH-F7) which is capable to receive 6m USB. So
after building the antenna, I first attached that radio to the squalo to see if it’s doing something. And yes, it worked!
There was an Italian 6m contest, and I heard lots of stations. Next I hooked up the squalo to my MiniVNA to did some
tuning. I tuned it (by moving the shortening strip and feed point) to let it resonate on 50.500 MHz, and adjusted the feed
point to get 50 ohms on that frequency. The antenna has an operating bandwidth of about 1 MHz, so it covers at least
50 – 51 MHz. That part of the band includes the CW and SSB areas, aswell as the beacons.

I experimented with turning the antenna around while receiving a steady signal (a beacon). There is no “dip” (like
dipoles have), but when receiving at one of the sides the signals are somewhat weaker. I didn’t notice any front/back
ratio.

The mount bracket. I used a aluminium strip for this, A piece of not-too-flexible PVC tube is used to fix the
but you better use some more solid metal for this. end points of the dipole.

Results

On August 15th 2009 I went to Adri to help him with the antennas. He’s blind, so he needs a helping hand now and then.
This time we moved his “north” antenna from the living room to the roof. Also, this was a good moment to put the squalo
in place, on the south side of his home. I did some final tuning (using my MiniVNA and laptop). Unfortunately the band
was closed at that moment. But the day after I received an email that he worked EA5, which is over 1500 km from his
site. So the antenna seems to be working.
 A view from the balcony. The buildings on the
background are about 10m higher than the antennas.

The squalo on its definitive place, next to the

Diamond 6/2/70 vertical, on the balcony rail on the
south side of Adri’s apartment.

Jan PA2JSZ sent me this picture of his version of the

6m squalo.

Bill VE3BXP is one of the many radio amateurs who

built this antenna, inspired by this article on my
website. He added an extra support by using a PVC
pipe and T-junction, which also acts as insulator.

Vladimir EW8AU suggests to feed the coax cable

through the copper tube.

Chris KC2JB made this great video, showing his way of building the squalo:
 6 Meter Squalo Antenna Build

PA0RDA’s hamradio shack

Since I built this antenna for Adrian PA0RDA, I added some pictures of his shack here:

Adri has his main equipment in the living room. You Adri’s vintage shack: a Hallicrafters SX 117 (top left),
can see his TS-2000, TM-V71, remote control of his a Racal RA17L (bottom left) and a Murphy B41
MFJ loop, and one of his talking watt meters. The (right).
small box with yellow buttons (in front of the TS-2000)
was made by Tjalling PE1RQM, it enables some
extra functions of the voice synthesizer in the TS-
2000, like speaking the frequency and the signal
strength. There’s also a Kent morse key on the
picture, as well as a Junker key. The blue “thing”
(beneath the keyboard) is a braille display.

I placed a vertical on the north side of his apartment,

on the roof of his living room. Before that, the antenna
was IN the living room.

This article was also published in:

DKARS Magazine, April 2015

 Posted in Antennas | Tagged 6m, antenna | 40 Replies

← Contest after heavy winds First preparations for the PACC 2012 →

40 Replies to “Squalo antenna for 6m”

1. Joe
23 February 2015 at 01:12

Hello friend, I want to build one of these for our radio club but only have a swr meter and an ohm meter can I fully adjust
and tune this with these meters?

Thank You

joe

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

23 February 2015 at 09:14

The SWR meter tells you something about the impedance of the antenna, it tells nothing about the resonance
frequency. Using a VNA or antenna analyser is therefore recommended. When not available the SWR meter
will help you to get a working antenna, but the result might not be optimal.

Reply ↓

2. Mic Sherwood W7WXX

3 March 2015 at 20:52

Could you please post the beam pattern?

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

6 March 2015 at 08:34

Mic, I don’t have accurate measurements, but I know that it’s an oval shaped pattern, where the gain to the
sides is about 3dB less than to the front and back.

Reply ↓

3. Joe
5 March 2015 at 04:48

Thank you for your reply, one last question, the only measurement I do not see is the distance that goes from the the
side with the 2–14 inch sides….how long is the pipe that goes back to the around the mast, it shows the 5 1/2 inches to
the shorting strap but what is the rest of the measurement? Thank you ever so much again I relly appreciate your help
please respond to kd4ysh@yahoo.com thanks friend.

73’s

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

6 March 2015 at 08:40

Joe, this is not a part of the antenna itself, it’s just a way to allow mounting the antenna to a pole. So make it
long enough to have the pole in the center of the antenna, so that it balances (weight) at the pole mount.

Reply ↓

4. Joe
11 March 2015 at 03:22

Hello Ernest, thank you for answering my questions I have a couple more, I have 3 motorola fm 6 meter radios not side
band but fm, should I build the square halo antenna or a verticle polarized? Are the 6 meter repeaters in my state
usually fm or side band, I really like the horizontal antenna for the least wind resistance the slimjim 6 meter antenna is
like 14 feet long. Thank you ever so much for your guidance thanks.

73’s
KD4YSH@yahoo.com

I am located in Tennessee

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

11 March 2015 at 09:21

Joe, I live in the Netherlands so I’m not familiar with the VHF repeaters in the US. FM repeaters are usually
vertical polarized, so the slim jim will be your choice for this. Horizontal polarization is commonly used for SSB
and CW communications, so the squalo will be very suitable for this.

Reply ↓
5. Fabian
3 June 2015 at 12:09

I’m interested by your antenna but, I think there is some problems with your inch-mm conversion.
In the table I see that 30,5 inches equals 64 mm and 27,56 inches equals 700mm.
Normally 1 inch = 25,4 mm
I think there is a mixture in the table.

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

3 June 2015 at 14:32

Fabian, you’re absolutely right. It’s probably some copy & paste failure. I’ve updated the table, 30.5 inches
equals 775 mm. Thank you for the correction.

Reply ↓

6. Jim Wilbur
7 June 2015 at 16:56

Hello Ernest. I finally found what I have been looking for !!! We live in a senior citizens mobile home park with very
restrictive rules on antennas . I have a all band HF verticle that I convinced them in thinking it is for emergency use so I
was allowed to have it . I needed an antenna that looks like a tv antenna which they will allow and the squalo will work .
Question ,are the side dimentions and front & back of the pipe inside or outside ?Thank you for the construction and
use of the antenna .
73 Jim .

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

7 June 2015 at 18:29

Jim, nice to hear that this antenna has enough “stealth” capabilities for your purpose The original design
mentions 1/2 inch tubing. However the diameter is not critical, so choose a diameter that is strong enough to
stay in shape. I used 12mm copper tubes, which is rather heavy but very solid. You can also bend a piece of
sturdy metal wire in the correct shape. All given dimensions are center to center, unless otherwise noted. Sizes
are not very critical, since you can easily adjust the resonance frequency by moving the shortning strap.

Reply ↓

7. Ron Foster
17 June 2015 at 02:33

I built the antenna to the specs published and unless I have made a huge error reading the drawing something is bad
wrong. I have a RigExpert RG-54 antenna analyzer and all my parameters are terrible. Using the drawing the initial
settings these these are my readings: swr 6.1, R = 7.7ohms, IZI = 11.4 ohms, X= 8.7 ohms, L =28nH. I’m using a 6′ lead
of RG213 for the connection.
Any ideas on where to look for problems?

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

17 June 2015 at 12:28

I hope you didn’t forget the shortening strap?

Reply ↓

8. Shawn
27 August 2015 at 07:19

I was looking up the 6m squalo and ran across your page. I just finish building one of these antennas using the same
plans. By just finished, I mean I just put the last bolt in the mast support about an hour ago. I will attach the feed line
tomorrow and start tuning it.
Do you know if this antenna needs an RF choke by wrapping the feed line? I was thinking that it might in order to
reduce the common mode current on the outside of the coax braid. Feeding a balanced antenna with an unbalanced
feed line is bound to have common mode problems.

Is this something you have tested or tried? Also, I was wondering how long of a feed line tail to attach to it? I will be
using a barrel connector to attach the rest of the coax to run to my rig. I was just wondering if there was a suggestion on
how long to make the piece attached to the antenna?

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

27 August 2015 at 11:13

Shawn,
Formally a 1:1 balun should be used, since this is a symmetric antenna (balanced) feeded with coax
(unbalanced). However, I’ve never experienced any issues without the balun.
You should tune the antenna so that its impedance is 50 ohms. The result is that the length of the feeder
doesn’t matter anymore, since the whole system is 50 ohms. If you plan to use a balun, first tune the antenna to
50 ohms with coax directly attached (without balun). When the resonance frequency antenna is correct and the
impedance is 50 ohms, insert the balun and verify that the antenna system is still 50 ohms.
If you have some pictures of your antenna, please send me an email with the pictures attached and I will add
them to this article to inspire future builders and share the knowledge.
 Reply ↓

9. Johnny
13 January 2016 at 23:12

I would be interested in any information on a stacking harness.

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

14 January 2016 at 09:59

Unfortunately I don’t have any numbers considering stacking squalo antennas. However, the squalo is quite
simular to the K0FF loop and people have been stacking these loops. I found this discussion that may help you:
http://www.eham.net/ehamforum/smf/index.php?topic=26519

Reply ↓

10. Wiley Clarkson

4 June 2016 at 13:01

I built an almost identical 50 MHz square loop about 8 years ago and mounted it on my pickup that I used for pulling my
camper. It exhibited a very low SWR over the bottom half of 50 Mhz. I used it with my FT-857d and it consistently out
performed my 1/4 wave steel whip that I also had on the truck. Unfortunately, I lost my original drawing with the
measurements and the antenna itself was destroyed by a very low tree limb while off road 4×4 in a mountain forest
(heading for a high point on that mountain!). The only difference was that I used a shorter distance from the shorting bar
to the support mast in order to put the antenna more forward over the pickup bed from the bumper and then added a
support from the mast to the pvc spacer. Now you have me wanting to build another square halo for a summer project!

Reply ↓

11. Oscar V. Sn M
16 October 2016 at 22:25

Dear Friend.
newly start the construction of the antenna scualo six meters, I have two queries.
1. The antenna has front or back side is the same
2. The assembly on the mast is isolated or not
atto remain your comments.
Oscar. CE5CSV
South Los Angeles CHILE

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

18 October 2016 at 20:29

Oscsar,
1) The antenna has about the same gain in both front and rear direction, about -3dB on the sides.
2) No isolation is needed. The shortening strap is part of the radiating system, the part between strap and mast
has only a mechanical purpose, not an electrical. I suggest you do not isolate the antenna for lightning
protection (assuming your mast/pole is grounded properly).
73, Ernest PA3HCM

Reply ↓

12. Oscar V. Sn M
17 October 2016 at 01:36

to start cutting the pieces measures the parts where this short strap missing.
Atte
Oscar CE5CSV
South Los Angeles CHILE

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

18 October 2016 at 20:32

Sorry Oscar, maybe I don’t understand your question, but I wouldn’t cut the pipe at the position of the shorting
strap.

Reply ↓

Oscar V. Sn M
19 October 2016 at 04:08

Dear friend Ernest.

Thank you for your answer, just missing the 2 pieces measures where this strap short, these measures
are not lacking tubes ok.
Thank you
Oscar

Reply ↓
 Ernest Post author
19 October 2016 at 08:38

Ok, now I understand you. That size is not critical. The drawing says: “adjust length to balance
on mast”, so I would suggest about 15 inches (38 cm, just a bit more than the length of the
sides).

Reply ↓

13. Oscar V. Sn M
19 October 2016 at 22:41

Ernest friend Thanks for your answers, please check the plane of the antenna missing two measures. 73 good luck.

Reply ↓

14. Arno
16 September 2017 at 21:49

Hi OM Ernest,
the measurements given are center to center or outside tubing ?
Best Regards

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

17 September 2017 at 08:15

Hi Arno,
Aall measurements are center to center. I’ve updated the text, since you’re not the first asking this.
73, Ernest PA3HCM

Reply ↓

15. Johann
1 January 2018 at 14:53

Hi guys.

I have built a Squalo for 2m. I am using it in a vertical plane. Defensively not my 7/8 wave vertical but still had nice
comms with repeaters some 100km away running 50W and antenna at 6m.

Then an brain flash hit me : why not a yagi style beam consisting of Squalo elements? After all the Squalo basically
could be seen as a “half size” quad loop… Hi hi.

Are there someone who have tried it… Just trying not to spend many a nights number crunching to model and try to
built it just to realise a standard quad beam works way better.

Johann ZS6L
WHATSAPP +27 01 305 4108

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

1 January 2018 at 16:46

Hi Johann, thanks for the inspiring idea! I think you end up with a moxon beam
73, Ernest PA3HCM

Reply ↓

Gayland
20 May 2019 at 23:09

This antenna is for listening 360. So then you can get on a beam or what ever.

Reply ↓

16. Thomas K
6 June 2018 at 21:56

Salute!
Ernest, thank you for sharing your knowledge of the Squalo antenna for 6 meters. I have built one to your specifications
and have made a number of local contacts with it while lying on my workbench inside my house. However, it needs to
go outside and onto a mast as my wife doesn’t appreciate exotic copper sculpture art in the house for some silly reason.
So my question is about mounting. I want to mount my squalo directly to a fiberglass mast. It appears in any photo I’ve
seen of other’s work, the mast is a conductive material (steel or aluminum) and attached directly to the squalo. I
perceive that as making the mast part of the antenna but, is it? TIA WA2SEA

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

24 June 2018 at 20:23

Thomas, the mast’s material doesn’t matter. Everything behind the shortening clamp is not part (electrically) of
the antenna.
btw… art needs public, so get your squalo outside ASAP
 Reply ↓

17. Christian
10 June 2018 at 09:12

Hello Ernest, I built my own squalo following the measurements on your website and it immediately works without
additional tuning. 73s Christian, DG7FEQ

Reply ↓

18. Waldemar
7 August 2018 at 00:04

Hi Ernest. One day on the Squalo:

https://flic.kr/p/KG7wMx
Best regards Wald SP3UR

Reply ↓

19. Janusz Juryk

29 December 2018 at 19:51

Good day,

What would be the max rf power for the antenna?

Cheers!
Janusz ve2zhp

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

17 February 2019 at 19:23

I don’t have any power ratings, it depends on the construction. My construction would easily allow a few
hundred watts.

Reply ↓

Gayland Grant W9AKW

20 May 2019 at 23:06

I see you wonder about power rateings. Run LMR 400 FLEX TO IT run 500/800watts. I built one a few
years back. It is a ok. Pluss it will work on 2M SSB ALSO. I built a board for a pattern to lay out one real
quick. But need to get it down out of the garage and use it. Be nice if you could get your antennas up
on top of the apartment building where you live. On weak signal stuff higher the better. Great job
building the squall. 73

Reply ↓

20. Peter Briggs

30 May 2019 at 08:07

Built one yesterday using standard 15mm pipe. I had to trim the length a little, so probably mis-measured somewhere.

Alas I’m getting a lot of RF back into the shack which is affecting the computer operating the rig on digital modes. I need
to use a Balun/choke of some description.

None the less, my thanks for the article.

Reply ↓

Ernest Post author

1 June 2019 at 17:32

Peter, did you tune the antenna by playing around with the positions of the shortening strap and feed point?
This should result in a near 50 ohms match, resulting in no RF feedback.

Reply ↓

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