The "Battle Creek Special" is a 3-Band-vertical Marconi-antenna for the bands 40 m/80 m/160 m with a ground net of wires as radials. The antenna has two traps, for 40 m and 80 m.

The Battle Creek Special was developped by K8GG, W0CD and W8UVZ in Battle Creek, Michigan. Many DX-peditions used this genious antenna with good results for the low-bands. On 40 m it is a stretched lambda/4-vertical. On 80 m and 160 m it is working as an inverted-L with a vertical part, built with aluminium tubes and two inverted-L-parts with wires. The traps can be constructed with RG-213 coax-cable. As radials you should use as many as possible, lengths >=18 m.

The dimensions in the table below are only for experimenting, the antenna must be tuned for CW or SSB operation. l 1 must lengthened for best SWR on 40 m, l 3 for 80 m and l 4 for 160 m. On all bands an SWR <1,8 must be available for operating with the built in pi-filter of a tube-amplifier.