so ive been putting off building my own dipole for way too long, always just buying stuff or borrowing antennas from the club. finally decided to just do it. planning a simple half wave dipole for 40m, gonna use some 14 gauge stranded copper wire i picked up at the hardware store and a chunk of PL-259 coax i have kicking around.

my main question is about the feedpoint - i was going to just solder the center conductor and shield to each leg and call it done, but someone at the club meeting mentioned i should use a 1:1 balun there. is that actually necessary for a basic backyard dipole or is it one of those things thats nice to have but not really needed? ive read about 50 different opinions on this and im more confused than when i started.

also not sure about center support - i dont have anything fancy, was thinking of just making a little strain relief out of some paracord and maybe drilling a hole in a piece of scrap PVC to keep the coax connection from flopping around. anyone done something like that with good results? would love to see what people have cobbled together.

the balun question comes up every time and honestly the answer is: it depends, but for a backyard 40m dipole close to horizontal you'll probably be fine without one to start. the issue is common mode current on the coax shield - without a balun the shield can radiate or pick up noise and your pattern gets a little weird, but you're not going to blow anything up or fail to make contacts. i ran a bare dipole for years before i ever added a choke balun and it worked fine.

that said a simple 1:1 choke balun is easy to wind yourself - just wrap 8-10 turns of the coax around a ferrite toroid (a FT-240-43 is what i usually use) right at the feedpoint and you're done. some guys just coil up a bunch of the coax in a loop and tape it, which works okay at lower freqs too. either way if you ever notice RF in the shack or weird SWR behavior, that's your first place to look.

for your center support the pvc idea is totally workable. i made one years ago from a pvc coupler with holes drilled through it, ran paracord through for the main hang point and just let the coax drape down with a small drip loop before the connection. has survived a few winters without issues. nothing pretty but it works.

yeah im in basically the same boat as you, just finished my first dipole like two weeks ago for 20m. went without the balun for now, swr looks fine across most of the band and ive been able to work some decent dx with it so cant complain. the center connector thing i just used a regular SO-239 chassis mount connector screwed to a piece of acrylic i cut from a hobby store sheet, cost me almost nothing. the acrylic holds up to weather okay so far but i dont know how it'll do long term, might switch to something better eventually.

biggest thing i messed up was cutting both legs the same length without accounting for the velocity factor of the wire - wait no actually i think i had the formula slightly wrong, ended up a bit long and had to trim. so just double check your math before you cut, easier to trim than to splice.