On 18 Sep, 17:52, Christian Treldal wrote:
Den Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:00:16 -0700 skrev Tom Corker:



1) Can I use copper tubing instead of aluminium?

Yes 10 or 12mm o.d. plummers coppertubing and fittings makes a great j-
pole

http://www.n7qvc.com/amateur_radio/copper.html

This one works great

2) Are the tube diameters crucial?

No; but for all antennas wider material gives wider bandwith

3) The instructions seem to imply that I can use the longer of the tubes
to mount the antenna. Does this need to be insulated?

yes, mount it on a plastictube from the plummer

4) I'll be using
the 2m band, max power 10 Watts, and a cable run of no more than 20
meters. What sort of cable would be best fro the feeder? (Ideally one
that can be purchased from Maplin:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?...6&MenuName=RF%

20Cable&FromMenu=y&worldid=3&doy=18m9)

RG213 will do, RG58 are too lossy on vhf.

Thanks.

--
Vy73 de OZ1GNN

Christian Treldal

Thanks for that. I'm thinking about going with the design you gave.
I'm also guessing I'll need to tune the antenna using an SWR meter. A
lot of the ones on ebay (UK) are listed as CB SWR meters. Will these
be OK for the 2m band?