Squid Pole Antenna

This guide will show you how to construct a unique and adjustable end-fed antenna using a telescopic squid pole and conductive tape. The design is also on my Youtube Channel Ham Radio Rookie.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96KtICkqXwQ

Materials

1. Telescopic squid pole (available from AliExpress or The Ham Radio Dude)
2. Faraday tape
3. M10 bolt
4. SO239 connector
5. Drill and tap (for the M10 bolt)
6. Counterpoise wire or existing metal fence
7. Coaxial cable

Disassemble the squid pole into its individual sections.

Attach strips of Faraday tape along the outside of each pole section.

Do not fold the tape over to the inside of the pole. This will interfere with the friction fit of the sections.

The Faraday tape on adjacent sections creates a capacitive coupling effect.

The small overlap between sections when the pole is extended allows you to adjust the capacitance by rotating the sections.

This adjustability could potentially allow for tuning the antenna to different bands.

Drill and tap the metal end cap of the squid pole to accommodate the M10 bolt.

Attach the M10 bolt to the end cap.

Connect the other end of the bolt to an SO239 connector.

This antenna requires a counterpoise for proper operation.

You can use a wire array specifically designed for this purpose or even an existing metal fence, as demonstrated in the video.

Testing with both a wire array and a Faraday cloth sheet has shown similar results to using the fence.

The 33ft antenna worked on bands from 40m to 10m.

I was able to make successful contacts on 10m with 60 watts and on 20m with 90 watts. From western Canada, I was able to make contacts in Italy and all of North America and South America.

Experiment with rotating the pole sections to find the optimal settings for different bands.

You can also experiment with collapsing the sections, as this surprisingly doesn't stop the antenna from working.