A two stage Combline Bandpass Filter (C-BPF) of the Vertically Installed Planar (VIP) structure has been investigated, which is essentially composed of a strongly coupled microstrip lines terminated with a planar fin and through-hole combined with the tapping feed approach. The principle and performance of this filter is studied approximately by an equivalent circuit model and also by the normalized 3D-FDTD method more exactly. The time domain iteration in the FDTD analysis is performed in an expanded time dimension resulting in a reduced CPU time. Some of the obtained numerical results are compared well with the measured ones. A modified VIP combline BPF has the advantages of simple structure, easy tuning, low cost, versatile bandwidth control and good skirt characteristics brought about by two attenuation poles.