Very nice, Dan. Building your own antennas is one of the great pleasures of ham radio, at least it is for me.
73, Steve W5ICR From: BVARC <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Daniel Poirot via BVARC Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2025 8:01 AM To: BRAZOS VALLEY AMATEUR RADIO CLUB <[email protected]> Cc: Daniel Poirot <[email protected]> Subject: [BVARC] n00b net (On build-your-own-antenna day) Howdy, y'all, Yesterday was a fun day in the backyard. I had just finished up a 2 meter quarter wave ground plane made out of 14 AWG Romex. Using the formula from studying for my license, I got a radiating element of ((234 / 146.94) * 12), or 19.1 inches. Cool. I straightened the wire, clipped the ground elements long, sanded one end clean, soldered ring terminals from Home Depot to four of them, and screwed them to the corners of a panel mount BNC. 16 AWG was used for the radiating element, as the BNC panel mount center pin is for coax and not coat hangers... I mounted the antenna to a leftover 5 foot section of 1/2" PVC pipe by threading my BNC cable through the PVC. I pounded an iron rebar rod (again Home Depot) into the back yard and threaded the PVC pipe and antenna cable onto that. Perfect. I am thinking of adding a bare ground wire from the BNC, out the bottom of the PVC to ground the whole thing. I was treated to a very clear signal to and from the 146.94 repeater. I even caught up with Ricki KJ5KUX. We chatted about our shared next project, the QRPguys 10m End Fed Half Wave! Ricki! Build this in a big flower pot on the balcony! ;-) Noticeably absent was the usual background static on both my TIDRADIO H3 and Explorer QRZ-1. Build your own antenna! 73 Dan KJ5IZK
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