Well, I tried building my own ¼-wavelength monopole with the metal railing and everything it's attached to as the ground plane, but it didn't work very well. :(
I'm targeting 6-meter with this, but I thought it'd make sense to use the middle of the band (52 MHz) as the target, so I did (C / 5200000000) / 4 to get the length of 1.44 meters.
What did I do wrong? :( #HamRadio #AmateurRadio
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Neil E. Hodges
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • •Comrade Weez
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •Neil E. Hodges likes this.
zl2tod
in reply to Comrade Weez • • •@weezmgk
@tk
Also the floor above is another effective ground-plane which will very much mess things up.
The lack of sight-lines won't help much.
Is there enough room to try a horizontal dipole between the railing and the floor above?
Neil E. Hodges likes this.
Neil E. Hodges
in reply to zl2tod • •I did try a G5rv shortened to the appropriate length for the shorter bands, but didn't have much luck.
Would something as simple as this be good?
Comrade Weez
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zl2tod
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •Well worth a go.
Don't go overboard on the insulators, nylon fishing line is fine for either end, and any old lump of plastic in the middle.
Solder the connections.
A sleeve balun may help get a better match for transmit. (1/4 wavelength * 0.66 velocity factor of braid along the antenna end of the coax, connected to the coax shield that distance from the antenna)
@weezmgk
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Comrade Weez
in reply to zl2tod • • •zl2tod
in reply to Comrade Weez • • •@weezmgk
Nylon monofilament fishing line comes in huge sizes if you want.
The problem with stranded ropes is that they hold water and stop working as insulators.
@tk
Comrade Weez
in reply to zl2tod • • •Neil E. Hodges
in reply to zl2tod • •