[DISCONTINUED]aluminium/steel rod dipole ham antenna by averaldo

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

UPDATE 3: I don't know why I came with such design, it is terrible! It's big, ugly, doesn't have any reason to be triangular, and it is a pain in the *** to adjust this because of so many screws. So i went for another design, SURPRISINGLY simpler than this one. Here it is:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3877369
UPDATE 2: After 1 year, it fell due to strong wings, after climbing to the roof i saw that was the pvc elbow tube that has escaped, the print survived well.. just mounted it again and it still works fine. The petg looks yellowish, but it seems ok.
UPDATE: It works, i'm currently using it with a cheap chinese 5W radio and its performing very very well, later will measure the SWR. I used 50ohm coax cable, and I made 6 turns around the PVC pipe to make a choke balun, I'm not sure what this is for but I've seen a lot of projects using, so I did it too.. It's been above my roof for about 2 weeks and no sign of damage due to weather yet.
Dipole antenna box (center piece) for 2m and 70cm bands (or whatever you want). I first designed it to use 8mm rods, but I can only find 3/8" rods in my local store, so I modified the files to use 3/8" rods for the elements.
For connecting the elements to the cable I drilled a hole and passed the cables through, use your imagination to find a better way to connect the elements. I am planning to add a connector fitting later for making it easier to unmount it from the cable. I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe for fixing it to the roof. It is an amateur design, I am novice to ham radio and antennas so maybe something is off, be gentle. suggestions are welcome.
I am using PET-G for testing out weather resistance, since where I live there is sun almost everyday of the year, I think PLA would not stand the heat and I can't get it to print well in ABS.
don't forget this is a WIP, and it means that it can be updated anytime!
Materials needed
12x M3 screws
2x 3/8" (or 8mm) aluminium/copper/stainless steel rods/tubed +-490mm long each (for 2m band)
2x 3/8" (or 8mm) aluminuim/copper/stainless steel rods/tubes +-170mm long each (for 70cm band)
50ohm Coax Cable (mine is rgc58)
3/4 pvc pipes
Solder, soldering iron, pliers, tape and all that diy stuff...