Thursday, December 6, 2012

6m Dipole is complete - I'm finally back in business.

I took some time, but I finally made my 6m dipole.  Since I work for a plumbing company, I decided to use copper pipe and fittings :)  Here are some pics:







I did a bit of antenna modeling before I made this antenna.  I was hoping that it would be as good as the model suggested - the 1/2" copper pipe really gave it a nice bandwidth!

Since I was trying to get it resonant for weak signal work, you can see that it's really matched quite well for 50.125 - I'm quite happy!!!

73 de KJ4WLH

3 comments:

  1. Looks like a good construction and a good SWR curve.

    What kind of results have you had with it so far?

    73
    Harvey, KM4JA

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  2. My previous 6m antenna was a M2 6m HO Loop. I'm actually very pleased with this antenna - I've had quite a few of the guys in the local 6m net comment on how much more signal I'm putting out than before. I'm still running the same power (100w) so it must be a couple of things:

    1. The dipole is broadside to their location
    2. The dipole is radiating "more" of the RF than the HO Loop
    3. The dipole is BOTH broadside and radiating more :)

    It was really a fun project; the "unexpected" was how the dipole really, REALLY wants to get "stuck" in some limbs on the way up/down... Otherwise, the bandwidth is really nice - we have an FM net on 52.525 on Sun Evenings and I'm able to participate - I could not do that with the HO Loop; the Loop just wanted to be resonant around 50.125 +/- some. There's no way that it'd ever get to FM on 6 and still be good for SSB at the bottom.

    73 de KJ4WLH

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  3. You might point out to other people that might try your design to use type L copper.

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