Fake It, Till You Make It

Making antennas is a shit business LOL. I have never found it to be a fun aspect of the hobby. But as the focus of my dxcc chasing is moving to 10m and the fact that I have completed 20 and 15m using the same antenna I have been using for donkeys nuts, I figured it is time up upgrade to a Yagi. 3 elephants on 10m is a reasonable antenna and as you can see in the image below, I have all the tube sitting there as left overs.

After looking at the various design options, what crap I have on hand and the like, the easiest yagi for me to build is a through the boom design with a gamma match. So then, if i cannot build a gamma matched dipole for 2m on the bench, there is no way in hell that I could build a yagi for 10m.

I know this looks dodgy as, and that is because it is. Crap is held together with duct tape, love and a hope and a prayer. This is the 3rd edition of dicking about here. The gamma match calculators were, well to say the least, kind of fucking useless. So I isolated the variables and just went at it one variable at a time to see the effect they have. Added capacitance first, moved the tap point second and finally changed the distance between radiator and match and in the end, I think i got a bit of an understanding of what does what.

A few hours later and I have this plot, not bad all things considered, like is connected to a bit of wood in a vice, its got alloy tube really close to it, its right next to the work bench and its stapled together with duct tape. But, I think I am now able to take this knowledge and turn it into a 10m yagi. For shits and giggles I might take what I have here and turn out 4 elephants for 2m and point it at the local repeater for full quieting HAHAHA.

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DXCC on 2 Bands

Kind of cool that I have 20 and 15m done now for DXCC, the next big focus will be on building a yagi for 10m and getting it in the air and trying to smash out 10m dxcc on the up of the cycle and during winter here, trying to add to 40m as well.

 

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