So I have gotten the start on the antenna I talked about earlier today.
I stopped off at Home Depot and picked up a 10 foot long PVC pipe for $16 after tax. This is just a standard one inch diameter pipe, white in colour. If you get lost in Home Depot like I do, find the plumbing section. It should be in there. Otherwise, look for the orange aprons and ask someone.
I also picked up a tripod to support the finished antenna from WalMart. The one I picked up can be found here. The head is going to be modified with a longer screw that will go into a 2×4 peice of wood, yet to be picked up.
The antenna itself is going to be built as 2 separate antennas, one for the 2m (145MHz) side, and one for the 70cm (440MHz). We started building the 70cm side. Elements have been cut. We used an online calculator that can be found at this site. A good friend of mine, Eric, some how came into an extreme amount of copper 14 gauge house hold wiring. We cut the wires to be 13″ for the reflector, 12 7/8″ for the driven element, and 12″ for the directors.
While this image only shows 1 director, there are 4 more to go along with this, to make it a 7 element Yagi-Uda antenna. All elements will be placed at 4″ intervals. At this stage we haven’t secured the elements to the PVC, but will probably be done tomorrow.
Until then.
