Changing wire size offers little benefit. We have tried many different wire sizes up to 5/8" the trouble is not worth the gains. The cost will triple
and you have nothing better to show for it in performance.
Using other materials such as steel will produce poor results.
Solid copper provides the best performance.
The copper wire will season over time and will be much tougher to bend after a year of outside exposure.
Notching the pvc pipe can be done with a drill and cutting wheel.
The width of the notch is about 2x the thickness of the blade.
If you hammer down the cap and the pvc pipe splits, you need to widen the notch. Use safety protection at all times.
Using a smaller or larger PVC pipe other than 3/4" schedule 40
will result in a change in impedance. This throws everything off.
The costs will go way up.
Stick to the plans and save yourself a lot of time and money.
Thinking about just using solid loops and no screws?
People that have tried it say, it has decreased performance.
How about making it out of fiberglass?
Well it has been done. It took a very longtime and in the end the costs
were triple and durability was not any better. It was a huge mess as well. There are beams like our PVC model with 10+ years in the weather and they are still working great. They do stand the test of time and weather.
We get a lot of e-mail. This beam is one of the most popular
2 meter homebrew designs in the world. We hear a lot of stories
and offer this information to help you. If you want to try something different by all means go for it. Build it, test it, prove it and photo it .
Please share your success stories and your failures with us so we can help others..
E-mail KG5ABL from QRZ.
We will update this section over time.
How about making one for 70 cm?
Well we did. It is only good for point to point, requires a lot of height and
it is very hard to hit the target with such a tight beam.
It makes a better fox hunt antenna than one for using to chat to the
friends on simplex. Hey it is not useless. - but it's not that
cheap to build either.
Mounting the antenna high
will improve rear rejection.
