Well, I just got rg 8 cable about 20 feet for free! The thing about it
it has two pl259 connectors on it. I need to have one end free so i can
wire up the slim jim or j pole I build this weekend. I really do not
eant to cut the cable as I would like to use it when I put the
permanent station up. See any way around this?

Can I use copper house wire 12/ 2 or so to connect to the points on the
j pole then bring them to a so connector Then screw the rg8 pl
connector into that? Will this through off the swr? What ohms is 12/2
wire?

He also gave me a short cable with two pl 259 connectors to connect
between my radio and the swr meter. It was a guy at a motorola dealer.
This cable is pretty thin and not rg8 but he said it was 50 ohms.
I plan on hooking the 20 feet from the swr to the antenna.

wrote:
Well, I just got rg 8 cable about 20 feet for free! The thing about it
it has two pl259 connectors on it. I need to have one end free so i can
wire up the slim jim or j pole I build this weekend. I really do not
want to cut the cable as I would like to use it when I put the
permanent station up. See any way around this?

Lots of J-Pole plans show a coax socket soldered directly
to the J-Pole stub.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp


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Well, I just got rg 8 cable about 20 feet for free! The thing about it
it has two pl259 connectors on it. I need to have one end free so i can
wire up the slim jim or j pole I build this weekend. I really do not
eant to cut the cable as I would like to use it when I put the
permanent station up. See any way around this?

Can I use copper house wire 12/ 2 or so to connect to the points on the
j pole then bring them to a so connector Then screw the rg8 pl
connector into that?

Sure. One fairly common J-pole design uses an SO-239 socket which is
mounted directly on one of the copper pipes at the feedpoint (use a
brass screw or bolt, and then some plumber's solder). This creates
the ground connection. Then, just run a short piece of copper wire
from the center pin of the SO-239, across the space between the pipes,
and solder it to the other pipe - this creates the "hot" side of the
feed. The feedline with its PL-259 plug is screwed into the socket,
and ends up sticking out to the side.

See http://www.tcars.org/elmer/jpole.html for one such design,
complete with a parts and materials list, and look at
http://www.alpharubicon.com/elect/jpolejaden.htm for another. One
design screws the SO-239 directly to the pipe, the other makes a
mounting bracket. Do whichever you prefer - when properly adjusted
and tuned the two designs should have performance so close to
identical that you cannot tell the difference.

Will this through off the swr? What ohms is 12/2
wire?

No matter what attachment method you use with a standard copper-pipe
J-pole, you must "match" it by adjusting the positions at which the
hot and grounded side of the coax are connected to the copper pipes.
As a rule of thumb, moving the attachment points upwards along the
pipe causes the feedline to "see" a higher impedance. You adjust the
position until your connection is at a point where the impedance is 50
ohms, and you end up with an SWR of 1:1 or close to it.

The easiest way to get good results is to use a set of published plans
in which the original designer has found the correct matching point,
and then reproduce the antenna as exactly as you can.

He also gave me a short cable with two pl 259 connectors to connect
between my radio and the swr meter. It was a guy at a motorola dealer.
This cable is pretty thin and not rg8 but he said it was 50 ohms.
I plan on hooking the 20 feet from the swr to the antenna.

Probably RG-58, and it should be fine for a short run to the SWR/power
meter.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Dave Platt wrote:
Well, I just got rg 8 cable about 20 feet for free! The thing about
it
it has two pl259 connectors on it. I need to have one end free so i
can
wire up the slim jim or j pole I build this weekend. I really do not
eant to cut the cable as I would like to use it when I put the
permanent station up. See any way around this?

Can I use copper house wire 12/ 2 or so to connect to the points on
the
j pole then bring them to a so connector Then screw the rg8 pl
connector into that?

Sure. One fairly common J-pole design uses an SO-239 socket which is
mounted directly on one of the copper pipes at the feedpoint (use a
brass screw or bolt, and then some plumber's solder). This creates
the ground connection. Then, just run a short piece of copper wire
from the center pin of the SO-239, across the space between the
pipes,
and solder it to the other pipe - this creates the "hot" side of the
feed. The feedline with its PL-259 plug is screwed into the socket,
and ends up sticking out to the side.

See http://www.tcars.org/elmer/jpole.html for one such design,
complete with a parts and materials list, and look at
http://www.alpharubicon.com/elect/jpolejaden.htm for another. One
design screws the SO-239 directly to the pipe, the other makes a
mounting bracket. Do whichever you prefer - when properly adjusted
and tuned the two designs should have performance so close to
identical that you cannot tell the difference.

Will this through off the swr? What ohms is
12/2
wire?

No matter what attachment method you use with a standard copper-pipe
J-pole, you must "match" it by adjusting the positions at which the
hot and grounded side of the coax are connected to the copper pipes.
As a rule of thumb, moving the attachment points upwards along the
pipe causes the feedline to "see" a higher impedance. You adjust the
position until your connection is at a point where the impedance is
50
ohms, and you end up with an SWR of 1:1 or close to it.

The easiest way to get good results is to use a set of published
plans
in which the original designer has found the correct matching point,
and then reproduce the antenna as exactly as you can.

He also gave me a short cable with two pl 259 connectors to connect
between my radio and the swr meter. It was a guy at a motorola
dealer.
This cable is pretty thin and not rg8 but he said it was 50 ohms.
I plan on hooking the 20 feet from the swr to the antenna.

Probably RG-58, and it should be fine for a short run to the
SWR/power
meter.

--
Dave Platt
AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page:
http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

What if you are using a design plan exactly with the same diameter
material but with different material, say conduit instead of copper?

If you direct connect an so connector. How do you adjust both sides? I
mean once the ground is in place it is hard to adjust the "hot" side
unless you bend the wire alot.

What if you are using a design plan exactly with the same diameter
material but with different material, say conduit instead of copper?

I would expect that the tuning would not change appreciably. The
antenna's losses might be higher, but likely not enough to be
noticeable.

If you direct connect an so connector. How do you adjust both sides? I
mean once the ground is in place it is hard to adjust the "hot" side
unless you bend the wire alot.

You experiment a lot.

Maybe you build a bunch of antennas with different attachment points,
and measure them out. Or, maybe you cut one copper-pipe J-pole,
don't actually solder the pipes together yet (just depend on a
friction fit while tuning), drill a spiral pattern of holes or a line
of holes in the pipe to which you can try screwing the SO-239, and try
a bunch of positions until you find one which works best. You then
rebuild the antenna with a new piece of pipe which is drilled for the
socket in only one place.

Or, you build a mounting-and-grounding bracket arrangement which
allows easy tuning... as is shown very clearly in one of the two sets
of plans I referred you to in the post you're replying to.

Like I said, the easiest way to get a working antenna is to exactly
reproduce a known-working example. If you want to vary the design,
you'll need to experiment, cut-and-try, and be willing to make
mistakes and learn from them.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Dave Platt wrote:
What if you are using a design plan exactly with the same diameter
material but with different material, say conduit instead of copper?

I would expect that the tuning would not change appreciably. The
antenna's losses might be higher, but likely not enough to be
noticeable.

If you direct connect an so connector. How do you adjust both sides?
I
mean once the ground is in place it is hard to adjust the "hot" side
unless you bend the wire alot.

You experiment a lot.

Maybe you build a bunch of antennas with different attachment points,
and measure them out. Or, maybe you cut one copper-pipe J-pole,
don't actually solder the pipes together yet (just depend on a
friction fit while tuning), drill a spiral pattern of holes or a line
of holes in the pipe to which you can try screwing the SO-239, and
try
a bunch of positions until you find one which works best. You then
rebuild the antenna with a new piece of pipe which is drilled for the
socket in only one place.

Or, you build a mounting-and-grounding bracket arrangement which
allows easy tuning... as is shown very clearly in one of the two sets
of plans I referred you to in the post you're replying to.

Like I said, the easiest way to get a working antenna is to exactly
reproduce a known-working example. If you want to vary the design,
you'll need to experiment, cut-and-try, and be willing to make
mistakes and learn from them.

--
Dave Platt
AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page:
http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

It is just I have some conduit and I can weld it. I thought is would be
interesting. I was thinking of building one of those "slim jims' but
think the mounting might prove to be a problem.

I am wanting to build a j pole, an arrow antenna type open stub, and
maybe a ground plane just to see if there is any difference in them
using for simplex and repeater operation. I eventually want to build a
yagi for 440 and compare it to the dual band open stub j pole like the
arrow.

I am just so confused over this j pole. So many people have different
opnions. One says it should never be grounded or touch a metal mast
others say it does not matter. SOme say it should use a choke of some
type others say it does not matter. It is confusing. What do you think
on that? I guess my uneducated opinion is it should be insulated and a
few turns of coax used as a choke but this is just that the people on
that side of the argument seem to be more convincing and some have doen
models on nec but I really do not know.

It is just I have some conduit and I can weld it. I thought is would be
interesting.

Sure. No reason not to do this. You may find that there are, or are
not significant differences from a copper-pipe J-pole. The
finding-out is part of what's interesting, no?

I was thinking of building one of those "slim jims' but
think the mounting might prove to be a problem.

As others have pointed out, a classic J-pole and a Slim Jim are the
same basic sort of antenna. The Slim Jim simply has a double-section
radiator, shorted at the top. The behavior and performance of the two
will be very similar.

See http://www.cebik.com/jp1.html for a lengthy discussion of such
J-pole variants.

I am just so confused over this j pole. So many people have different
opnions. One says it should never be grounded or touch a metal mast
others say it does not matter. SOme say it should use a choke of some
type others say it does not matter. It is confusing. What do you think
on that?

Here's my take on it. At www.cebik.com you can find out a bunch of
other info and discussion.

The classic copper-pipe J-pole is neither a fully-balanced design nor
a fully-nonbalanced design. The impedances "seen" by the two sides of
the feedline are similar, but not identical, and thus there are going
to be somewhat-different currents flowing on the two sides of the
matching arm.

Now, some people feel that a J-pole gives the best and most consistent
performance overall if you force it to act as much like a balanced
antennas as possible... you force the currents on the two sides of the
matching stub to be as equal as you can, and you eliminate the
pathways which would allow RF current to flow down to ground through
other paths (that is, through a grounded mast, and along the outside
of the feedline).

To implement this approach, you insulate the J-pole (or Slim Jim) from
ground, and you use some sort of balun or choke on the feedline to cut
off the outside-of-the-feedline radiation. Some people loop the coax
a few times to create a choke, some people run the coax down the
inside of the copper pipe, some people stick a few ferrite beads on
the outside of the coax, and some people use a half-wavelength 4:1
coaxial balun.

This approach, carefully implemented, *may* give you a J-pole or Slim
Jim whose radiation pattern closely approximates that of a classic
half-wave vertical dipole. You're keeping RF currents from flowing in
any places which could cause radiation which disturbs the pattern. A
J-pole or Slim Jim of this sort would tend to be insensitive to small
variations in the length of the feedline, because the feedline is
choked off and is presenting a high impedance.

So, this is the right and best approach? Not necessarily.

The opposite approach can also work very well... you just build a
J-pole, stick it on a metal mast, run the feedline down to your
transmitter without choking, and get on the air. There are many, many
such J-poles in operation today, with very satisfied owners.

Such J-poles *may* end up with a nontrivial amount of RF flowing down
the mast, or down the outside of the feedline. This may disturb the
antenna's radiation pattern somewhat (making it less than ideally
omnidirectional), or may cause the SWR seen by the transmitter to
change somewhat if the feedline length is varied or if the mast is
touched (both of these can change the outside-of-the-feedline RF
impedance and currents).

However, these can very easily be small and insignificant factors in
many installations. Radiation from the feedline and the mast might
actually help an antenna's coverage more than it hurts, in certain
circumstances... it might "bend" the antenna's pattern into a
direction where the slight additional gain is helpful, at the expense
of a gain loss in another direction where there doesn't happen to be
anyone that the owner doesn't want to talk to. A shift in SWR due
to mast or feedline RF-current effects can often be "tuned out" of the
system just by moving the feedline attachment points a fraction of an
inch... in a base-station application such an adjustment, once made,
would probably not need to be re-done unless you start changing cables
or moving the mast around.

So... an insulated-and-forcibly-balanced J-pole may well be a more
theoretically-perfect antenna in some sense, but a grounded J-pole
with no attention paid to balancing or choking could quite easily work
just as well in any given installation.

My own copper-pipe J-pole uses a hybrid approach (well, that's the
polite term... "it's schizophrenic" is equally valid). It's grounded
to the mast, but the feedline is well choked (it runs inside the
copper pipe and through a couple of ferrite beads therein, and there's
a four-turn choke loop just outside the end of the pipe). Why did I
do it this way? Why not?! It works fine, it's been working fine for
close to three years, and if an insulated-and-perfectly-balanced
version gave me a dB or two better gain uniformity I would very
probably never notice the improvement.

Just BUILD SOMETHING, guy. Don't wait around until you figure out the
One True Way To Do It Right. There isn't one... or, rather, there are
at least a thousand.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Dave Platt wrote:
It is just I have some conduit and I can weld it. I thought is would
be
interesting.

Sure. No reason not to do this. You may find that there are, or are
not significant differences from a copper-pipe J-pole. The
finding-out is part of what's interesting, no?

I was thinking of building one of those "slim jims' but
think the mounting might prove to be a problem.

As others have pointed out, a classic J-pole and a Slim Jim are the
same basic sort of antenna. The Slim Jim simply has a double-section
radiator, shorted at the top. The behavior and performance of the
two
will be very similar.

See http://www.cebik.com/jp1.html for a lengthy discussion of such
J-pole variants.

I am just so confused over this j pole. So many people have
different
opnions. One says it should never be grounded or touch a metal mast
others say it does not matter. SOme say it should use a choke of
some
type others say it does not matter. It is confusing. What do you
think
on that?

Here's my take on it. At www.cebik.com you can find out a bunch of
other info and discussion.

The classic copper-pipe J-pole is neither a fully-balanced design nor
a fully-nonbalanced design. The impedances "seen" by the two sides
of
the feedline are similar, but not identical, and thus there are going
to be somewhat-different currents flowing on the two sides of the
matching arm.

Now, some people feel that a J-pole gives the best and most
consistent
performance overall if you force it to act as much like a balanced
antennas as possible... you force the currents on the two sides of
the
matching stub to be as equal as you can, and you eliminate the
pathways which would allow RF current to flow down to ground through
other paths (that is, through a grounded mast, and along the outside
of the feedline).

To implement this approach, you insulate the J-pole (or Slim Jim)
from
ground, and you use some sort of balun or choke on the feedline to
cut
off the outside-of-the-feedline radiation. Some people loop the coax
a few times to create a choke, some people run the coax down the
inside of the copper pipe, some people stick a few ferrite beads on
the outside of the coax, and some people use a half-wavelength 4:1
coaxial balun.

This approach, carefully implemented, *may* give you a J-pole or Slim
Jim whose radiation pattern closely approximates that of a classic
half-wave vertical dipole. You're keeping RF currents from flowing
in
any places which could cause radiation which disturbs the pattern. A
J-pole or Slim Jim of this sort would tend to be insensitive to small
variations in the length of the feedline, because the feedline is
choked off and is presenting a high impedance.

So, this is the right and best approach? Not necessarily.

The opposite approach can also work very well... you just build a
J-pole, stick it on a metal mast, run the feedline down to your
transmitter without choking, and get on the air. There are many,
many
such J-poles in operation today, with very satisfied owners.

Such J-poles *may* end up with a nontrivial amount of RF flowing down
the mast, or down the outside of the feedline. This may disturb the
antenna's radiation pattern somewhat (making it less than ideally
omnidirectional), or may cause the SWR seen by the transmitter to
change somewhat if the feedline length is varied or if the mast is
touched (both of these can change the outside-of-the-feedline RF
impedance and currents).

However, these can very easily be small and insignificant factors in
many installations. Radiation from the feedline and the mast might
actually help an antenna's coverage more than it hurts, in certain
circumstances... it might "bend" the antenna's pattern into a
direction where the slight additional gain is helpful, at the expense
of a gain loss in another direction where there doesn't happen to be
anyone that the owner doesn't want to talk to. A shift in SWR due
to mast or feedline RF-current effects can often be "tuned out" of
the
system just by moving the feedline attachment points a fraction of an
inch... in a base-station application such an adjustment, once made,
would probably not need to be re-done unless you start changing
cables
or moving the mast around.

So... an insulated-and-forcibly-balanced J-pole may well be a more
theoretically-perfect antenna in some sense, but a grounded J-pole
with no attention paid to balancing or choking could quite easily
work
just as well in any given installation.

My own copper-pipe J-pole uses a hybrid approach (well, that's the
polite term... "it's schizophrenic" is equally valid). It's grounded
to the mast, but the feedline is well choked (it runs inside the
copper pipe and through a couple of ferrite beads therein, and
there's
a four-turn choke loop just outside the end of the pipe). Why did I
do it this way? Why not?! It works fine, it's been working fine for
close to three years, and if an insulated-and-perfectly-balanced
version gave me a dB or two better gain uniformity I would very
probably never notice the improvement.

Just BUILD SOMETHING, guy. Don't wait around until you figure out
the
One True Way To Do It Right. There isn't one... or, rather, there
are
at least a thousand.

--
Dave Platt
AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page:
http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!


If I build a j out of conduit and make it more like a "U" cutting the
long and short and crossbar at 45 degree angles so they can be welded
togther, how would I measire the length to cut each piece? Can I mount
the cross bar to the mast since I wont have a bottom "leg"?

Dave Platt wrote:
Just BUILD SOMETHING, guy. Don't wait around until you figure out the
One True Way To Do It Right.

That's my excuse for procrastinating. :-)
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp


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"Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till
the day after"

"Procrastination is the thief of time", misquoted as....

"Constipation is the thief of time, diarrhoea waits for no man!"

Which leads me to..... "In a recent survey to determine whether
pet owners were at all worried by the use of canned food
causing an increase in the prevalence of constipation amongst
their pets, 8 out of 10 owners said that their cats couldn't
give a ****."

"Cecil Moore" wrote in message
...
Dave Platt wrote:
Just BUILD SOMETHING, guy. Don't wait around until you figure out the
One True Way To Do It Right.
That's my excuse for procrastinating. :-)