Quick and dirty 1/4 GP antenna

[rixdafix]

One thing that's really nice about UHF, the small antennas. Made this little guy the other night. Fun to watch the impedance change with height above ground and nearby objects. VNA sweep is with antenna about six feet above ground outside. Calibrated at the feed point. Able to hit my usual repeaters with it. Kinda cool.

 

[AudioShockwav]

I dig homebrew stuff like that.
When I first started playing with vhf we used to build little ground plane antennas like that.
Even quads, they were so easy,
Wood 12 gauge wire and a tape measure, feed it with some 75 ohm coax and on the air.
Nice.

73
Jeff

 

[Dopple]

Along the lines of homebrew antennas, we made some J-poles years ago out of 1/2" copper pipe, which, in the "before time" was fairly inexpensive. I'm thinking if I'm going to make something again, I'll use PVC to support a wire inside of it.

 

[rixdafix]

Along the lines of homebrew antennas, we made some J-poles years ago out of 1/2" copper pipe, which, in the "before time" was fairly inexpensive. I'm thinking if I'm going to make something again, I'll use PVC to support a wire inside of it.

A local I talk to also made a J-pole out of 1/2 copper and it worked out really well. He's got it about 40 feet up. I just finished a collinear antenna I'll need to house in something but I heard pvc can detune an antenna.