Best Home Made Antenna

[theonlysilentbob]

What is the cheapest/best antenna you can make?

Post any instructions on how to make it and any pictures.

[BobOstro61]

I would say a DiPole antenna. Sorry, I don't have pics or instructions let alone knowing how to make one.

[231]

Indeed a dipole is the cheapest to make. I've never had much luck with them myself. Many of the Ham sites will walk you through step by step on how to make one. [Please login or register to view this link] has some good ideas, and there are a host of other free instructions on the web. Just do a google search on antenna building...and you'll see.

[HI-TECH]

the cheepest best built antenna would have to be a 1/4 wave ground plane,

234
-------- = length of elements
freqency


use 5 elements and a pl259 jack out of the back of an old radio... some insulators and some rope.


you can eather have the ground elements @ 45 degrees or 90 your choice.

5 - equil lengths of copper wire (lenth is what you calulated from above)
1 - pl259 jack
5 - insulators (prefreably cermaic)

basicly you want to solder it all together and figure out a way to mount it up. eather up in a tree or up on a 2x4 or something. but the easyest is the di-pole

[Mr RadioActive]

I go with the steel coathanger, plastic ones dont work as good.

[231]

I go with the steel coathanger, plastic ones dont work as good.

I had forgotten all about that antenna choice! :lmao: :Peace!:

[BigBubbaBD]

HI-TECH

Any pictures of this?

A couple people around here have homemade antennas that work really well.
I would like a new base but cant really justify getting another with the one I have now working perfectly fine.. But I could talk myself into building something if I could get better performance!

[Phaze91460]

I like plastic coat hangers. much safer. You cant poke your eye as bad.

[Rex_foxhound]

Anybody heard from Falkon MX-5 lately? He sent me some instructions on building antennas. I'll try and find where I saved them.

[231]

HI-TECH

Any pictures of this?

A couple people around here have homemade antennas that work really well.
I would like a new base but cant really justify getting another with the one I have now working perfectly fine.. But I could talk myself into building something if I could get better performance!

Well, you might consider building a 3 element yagi or quad beam. It wouldn't be that expensive to build and really helps on the DX (not to mention local). Nothing says you have to put a rotor with them...in fact, many simply will put them in the general direction of typical DX and use them strictly for that.

[Please login or register to view this link] & [Please login or register to view this link] info' & instructions.

Hope that helps some.