Ham Radio - My durable and portable 2 meter Yagi antenna.

Ham Radio - My durable and portable 2 meter Yagi antenna.

 

Thanks for the vids Kevin. Great info for new hams like myself.

 

Copper foil tape will do the same for bandwidth. Just wrap the pvc with it, solder on some jacks to make it easy to disassemble. But using what you got is practical and simple stupid. Always liked the idea of flipping the antenna 90 degrees but never had an elevation rotor to play with. I have a scorpion 8 element still in the box I want to try it with as the last one used a relay and I wasn't happy with it.

 

I like the PVC hanger method. Lower Weight is important as is rigidity -- could do something similar with 1/4 inch schedule 80 etc. Playing around with antennas is fun.

Question:
Why not use a tape measure? Just punch a few holes in it with a screw driver and screw it onto the PVC? The tape measure has a natural contour due to it's non-flat shape that would fit right onto the PVC? I can see some advantage of the ladder line for the driven element -- you could feed it as a folded dipole ! No hairpin required !

 

I spent a few days pursuing setting the driven element up as a folded dipole using a 'trombone' coax match method. It was fiddly and hard to get working well, plus it was bulky with the extra coax involved. I chose to go with the hairpin approach to keep things lighter. And it was easier to get it working reliably.

 

Hi Kevin , Nice I like it Please can I ask that you send me a drawing and sizes to my e mail,
Thanks
Pieter
Happy new year to all
73

 

Nice video, but why not put the elements in the PVC pipe. You can fold the ladder-line to make it fit.

 

The answers are in his blog post. https://kb9rlw.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-durable-2-meter-3-element-yagi.html

 

Simple and seemingly effective. Nice job!

 

I really enjoyed watching your video. Nicely done. I saw the comment about using copper foil and I had that thought as well. However, we all have window line laying around and it is also easier to cut and tune besides being cheaper.

 

Thanks for all the videos, always good information.

 

very cool

 

I've tried 'plumbing' frame for VHF antennas too. The first one I've assembled was 2mtrs Moxon just as the proof of concept. Sorry, no photos or videos but the frame itself is pretty similar to KB7TBT's so you really don't need another video. I've used just a simple 14AWG insulated copper wire and duct taped it to the frame. Also I did the ugly balun with few turns of feedline right on the frame. So there are few tips from me:
- with a duct taped wire you may correct interelement distance as the wire may be slightly moved forward or back to achieve best results however most short antennas are pretty broadband so usually you don't have to worry about
- ugly balun is not really good idea for VHF as it doesn't suppress common mode efficiently: better use quarterwave tube (made of thicker cable's braid) to ideally symmetrize the driven element
- just go and build your own!

 

Hi Kevin, My God why didn't you do this and why didn't you do that. Is that all some people have in their brain. WHY ?. Right that is my rant done . Well done Kevin, not why. I liked the way you thought on the caged dipole idea. The RAF use to make just about all their antennas in that fashion. Or should I say had made for them. I use to see loads of them each time I had cause to visit a station. They would save a lot of antenna switching. I made a dis-cone antenna. Initially designed to cover 2m and 70cm. I got carried away on making it and it ended up with a 4 ft dia. disk or just over and approx 8 ft long rods on the cone. It was gradually made up in the loft as I was able to get hold of the copper rods and unfortunately when we moved it got left there. It was just too big to even think of getting it down through the trap door and I did not want to cut it up. It would cost a fortune to remake with the amount of 3-4 swg copper rod that went into the cone, plus the amount of solder that jointed it together. It worked great on 2m and 70 cm and with the size it would have covered 6 and 4 m. Still just one of those things.
73 and a Happy New Year de John - G0WXU in a cold and wet or icy West Yorkshire. U.K.

 

Would it make a difference if you mounted the "window line" 90 degrees from where you have them?