RadioBanter - View Single Post

December 21st 04, 08:25 PM

On 2004-12-21, wrote:

No, the tv tower is already up. I meant I can weld the elements. (Of
course only if it is weldable material.) I was wondering if emt tubing
would be a good choice?

Aluminum would be a better choice than emt tubing. The EMT stuff will rust
after a while, and is not as strong as it appears to be. It would also be
heaver than aluminum tubing for making a yagi.

You might not need to weld the tubing anyway. You can get nesting tubing,
and connect lengths by splitting the ends a bit and using hose clamps. Also
for the bands you mentioned, the tubing would more likely need to be cut to
length, rather than joined together to increase the length.

The antenna would be about 25 feet up. I had someone else tell me that
a j pole does not work very well. Is this true?

J-poles work well, but it all depends on your definiation of "working well".
The higher the better, 25 feet would probably work, but it depends on the
terrain between the repeaters and your antenna.

I can rotate the mast by turning the antenna rotor hooked to my tv down
stairs. The only pain would be running down stairs every time I want to
do it.

If you already have ther rotor that would be ok, just leave a reasonable
distance between the tv antenna (if there is still one there) and your yagi.

What would you do in this situation? Can you get as good as or better
performance building one yourself?

I think that I would put up at least 2 antennas. A j-pole first, and then a
yagi. If I had a multimode rig, I would put the yagi in a horizontal plane
for ssb use.

As for performance, you can make just about anything that the commercial
manufacturers can. It might cost more or less depending on your skills and
what you have available for materials.

--
Alex / AB2RC
Linux is user friendly, however it is not idiot friendly