Now this is very exciting I know, but it's all I had time for today (spent most of the day giving an old friend a tour of the track at Talladega):
Like watching paint dry...
I'm posting these pics for this reason: When this antenna is finished, it will be built totally from stuff bought at:
Walmart
Lowes
Home Depot
Bass Pro Shops
Advance Auto Parts
[EDIT: Not entirely, I'd forgotten about the Palomar Balun-- but I went with that to avoid a coaxial coil balun, though those have worked just fine when I've used them.]
No earth-shaking design innovations, and no one will mistake me for the new Hiram Percy Maxim. BUT-- maybe it will start would-be antenna builders thinking about possibilites. If you've looked back through QST from past decades, hams used what they had on hand where possible and the stuff
worked. If construction similar to this were used on CB, the cost and weight would be even lower-- not to mention the simpler task of building a single band antenna.
The questions I won't be able to answer until it's built are:
1. Total weight (I'm shooting for under 20 lbs)
2. Whether the element spacing I've chosen will give me a good compromise feedpoint impedance on both bands.
3. If the poor f/b ratio I experienced on VE7CA's design on 20m will be improved with this spacing (he used 6.99' because that's what would fit in his car).
4. Whether I'll need to give up on the 3 elements for 10 meters when the moment of truth arrives in tuning, and just saw off the forward 4' of the boom and have 2 elements on each band.
So, we'll see.
Rick