Richard Harrison wrote:

Geoff Mendleson offered some good advice.

Thanks Richard. I appreciate the mention.

The dipole he suggested can be made using one 19-inch whip as the upper
half of a vertical dipole and a 19-inch metal tube as the lower half of
the dipole. The tube is also used as a sleeve over the coax which feeds
the dipole at its center.

The advantage of using a whip and tube are the much wider bandwith than
with a wire antenna. However if you are really stuck for places to put
it, two 19" pieces of wire will do. Since most people only use a few
watts on 2m FM, then the thinnest wire you can find will probably do.

This antenna is often called a coaxial or sleeve antenna. It is also
often disguised to appear as something else such as a flagpole, etc.
This antenna has 0 dBd gain and is omnidirectional in the horizontal
plane. It works well in almost any line of sight direction and so is
useful with portable and mobile stations. It is as good as a ground
plane antenna without projections to cause injuries.

I think someone sells one that is a plastic pipe you slip over a vent
pipe.

If you are allowed TV antennas, you can build a "CIA special" which is
a 2m and 440 beam fed by 300 ohm twinlead. On HF, the twinlead becomes
the antenna and the beam part a capacative hat.

I hid a J-Pole made of 300 ohm twinlead in side a white plastic pipe.
If you use thin enough coax to feed it, it can be used to support all
sorts of things, a pin-wheel or wind speed gage for example.


73,


Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
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