I made a thing!

Actually, I made two things:

The first is a quarter wave ground plane antenna for the 2m ham radio band.

It’s based on the instructions in this video by K7AGE

The second is a semi-portable PVC pole/stand to get the antenna about 8ft in the air.

My initial plan was to raise the antenna up 12ft, but my quick-and-dirty design made with lengths of ¾in PVC wasn’t stable enough to stand on its own. I have ideas for fixing that, but this shorter version worked well enough to participate in a ham net on a local repeater tonight.

I’m going to see if I can hit a couple of repeaters down in the Bay Area later this week using this set up.

W7RAB 73