"John - KD5YI" wrote in message
...
I made a j-pole from galvanized steel. It worked beautifully. When I
replaced it with a commercial antenna I notice very little change in
performance and signal strength. I had hoped my kluge was deficient in
performance compared to the commercial antenna. Didn't seem so. My QTH was
way out in the country side about 20 miles from the nearest repeater.

Just a story for you, no hard data. Sorry.

John

Unless you can tell the differance in a few tenths of a dB, almost any
conductive material will work for simple antennas if the diameter is large
in terms of a wavelength. If the antenna is built the same or vary similar
to a comercial antenna, you usually don't notice any differance.

Lots of money is spent on the comercial stuff for little or no improvement.
Problem for many is buying the materials. If you only need a small ammount
of material , you often have to buy a lot.
Then not everyone has the machinery to do the building.