A crimp on eyelet to fit your antennas connector, a string of speaker wire about 19-20.RE: The NA4IT 'CHEAP' Dual Band Ground PlaneWe deliver the quality 2 Meter Antennas products at affordable prices. I recently built a one 1/4 wave element over eight 1/2 wave elements collinear vertical for the 1.25M band out of 8 gauge copper wire (about 19 feet tall).A homemade rat-tail ground plane costs 35 cents each to make. Because, the 45 foot tower with the smaller antenna will have the primary radiation lobe higher above the ground than the primary radiation lobe of the bigger antenna at the lower height.

This antenna is similar in construction to the 2-meter OFC sleeve dipole I built over 8 years ago, but it is a simple center-fed dipole. I am wondering what effect keeping them the same size has.We sell Diamond Antenna 2m 70cm Base vertical Deals Radioworld LTD best prices, We stock all types of Diamond antennas for ham radio application,Shop for 2 Meter Antennas here. Commercial antennas use radials that are usually shorter than the radiating element. WishRing HH-9000 10/6/2m/70cm High Gain Quad-Band Mobile Radio Antenna for Tyt Wouxun.

4 local repeaters and “hit” approx. 3-bucks.The purpose for building the antenna was to compare performance / replace my existing 2-meter 300-ohm flat wire J-pole hanging down from the ceiling tile at work, 4-th floor office building.Constructing the ground plane out of coat hangers was not too difficult and I mounted the antenna by hanging from the ceiling tile with a string - Like my original wire J-pole.The results were surprisingly positive – Almost doubled my 2-meter range from my office!With original wire J-pole I could hear approx. Anyone know how they work in place of a balun?Soon after reading the article I was strolling through Wal-Mart and came across a 5-pack of brass-coated metal coat hangers for approx.

The radiator is 19.5' and the 4 radials are 20' each. 5 local repeaters (with moderate noise to 100% full-quieting).Antenna performance comparison performed with an Icom (IC-V8) 2-meter HT running high power connected to an external home-brew 9.5V, 5Amp DC power supply.I built a coat hanger groundplane using an SO-239 chassis mount connector and 5 pieces of straightened coat hanger. 6 local repeaters and “hit” approx.

It is rusted through and through, but still performs as it did when it was new. As for the use of coat hangers, I built mine back in 1995. Construction is similar to N4AIT's, except there is only 1 radiator and all radials are the same length. SWR ranges from <2 to flat on all frequencies on 2m and 70cm.

You would have to get creative with the two element version (maybe two pen barrels, sawed off at a 60 degree angle or something like that). I coated the area around the joint at the base of the connector liberally with epoxy and then slid the barrel down over that, making sure the cement oozed out at the top and around the connector, spreading with a stick.When the epoxy cured it really provided extra strength at that joint. If you can scrounge the connector out of your junque box or at a flea for a buck or less, makes for an almost free antenna.Here is another tip for the single element version: I had one break off where it was soldered into the connector, and when I re-soldered it I wanted to strengthen it a bit, so I hacksawed a short piece of the plastic barrel (not the ink cartridge, take that out) from an empty bic pen. Needless to say, the new one sits in the closet waiting for the day that the rusted 8 1/2 year old antenna disintegrates.Yep, coathangers work just fine, have made 3 of them with coathangers, just have to file off all the crap (and maybe file down the size a little bit to fit inside the connector).I also tried copper house wire, but it bends too easily for the 2 meter version. Ironically, the new one, although built exactly the same as the original (length of all elements the same) doesn't perform as well as my trusty rusty.

My radials and vertical element are from #14 AWG solid copper wire, and the SO-239 is mounted on a small 'L' shaped bracket that can easily be attached just about anywhere with a 'C' clamp or even vice grips. My design is slightly different in some of the materials and construction, but very similar in some respects to the one in this thread. I've never used one for 440, but I have used one for 2m, and it works extremely well.'That's exactly what I did recently. Just make the single top wire straight up and down at the desired length (19' for 2m, 6' for 440), and make all four ground radials the same length.

All things considered these are good performers, cheap, easy and fun to construct, very portable, and with a little weatherproofing could even be a semi-permanent base antenna for emergencies or other situations where you need to get something up and running quickly and easily.Normally, the SWR can be adjusted by messing with the angle of the radials. I can hit my local 2m/70cm repeaters located 20 miles away, on 5 watts with a full quieting signal, and nearly full quieting on 500 mw. Performance wise, both the 2m and 70cm models I made had SWR's of 1.2 to 1 or less across the entire repeater portion of both bands, and a little higher at the top and bottom ends, but never more than 1.5 to 1 on either band. Small red or yellow plastic caps from a Radio Shack SPST switch are glued onto the bare ends of the vertical element and radials to give the antennas a nice neat look, and they are less likely to poke holes in anything too. The radials and SO-239 are secured to the L bracket with 4/40 machine screws, so the whole thing can be disassembled quickly for transporting, and re-assembled on site, and this was important to me, because the radials and vertical are easily bent. The radials are bent down at a 45 degree angle to help keep the radiation angle low.

I've never used one for 440, but I have used one for 2m, and it works extremely well. Just make the single top wire straight up and down at the desired length (19' for 2m, 6' for 440), and make all four ground radials the same length. But it's so cheap, keeping extra radiators on hand is no biggie!Also, for very little more money, if one doesn't like the possible directivity of this antenna, one could simply build two of them, one for 2m and one for 440. Of course, after bending them for a while the connector will break. You can then remove them or even bend them all up for transportation. They are then screwed to the SO-239 with small nuts and bolts.

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