Flowerpot Antenna Housing by echicken

Last crawled date: 2 years, 10 months ago

Basically this design but with a purpose-built housing. I didn't want to mount my antenna in an oversized tube, secure it with fishing line, or drill holes in PVC pipe. The resulting antenna is fairly slim and has (thus far) performed and held together well.
Materials:
8 x M5 x 20mm screws
8 x M5 nuts
3 x 2.5mm-wide zip ties
2.5 M (8.25 feet) of RG-58C/U coax
Copper tape or aluminum foil, 235mm x 45mm
RF connector of your choosing
Mast roughly 23 mm OD (I used a scrap of 1/2" PVC pipe)
Adhesive to bond sections together (I used gel superglue)
Choose your filament wisely. It will need to withstand UV and the elements. Some pigments may affect the filament's RF properties; clear or 'natural' may be best, YMMV.
Don't insert nuts into all of the available slots. The screws only need to terminate in nuts. Extra slots, and provisions for a mast set-screws have been made in case it helps with your installation.
Some of the file names are obvious. The others, s1 through s7, are numbered 'sections' that the element is fed through. s1 mates with the coil form, s2 mates with s1, and so on. The inner diameter of s4 - s7 is smaller than s1 - s3 to prevent slackness or kinking of the stripped section of cable. s4 is slightly longer than s5 - s7.
Plan your assembly carefully, gluing sections together ahead of time in the way that works best for you. Do not glue s7 and top cap on until you are done tuning. Don't glue the coil form, s1, and bottom cap together until you're done wrapping and securing the coil. Hold coil form and s1 against a flat surface to align their mast mounts when gluing.
You'll want to print:
4 x clamp
2 x wall mount
3 x s5-s6-s7
1 x everything else
As for the rest, adapt the instructions from the above link to complete the assembly, and modify as needed to suit your installation. (Hint: when dual-banding, the foil should cover the entirety of sections s3 and s4 for starters, but may need to be repositioned or trimmed when tuning.)
I painted some "liquid tape" over the foil for weather proofing in lieu of heatshrink, which is inadvisable here. You can probably use electrical tape or plasti-dip or whatever else you come up with that doesn't involve melting the housing with a hot air gun.
OpenSCAD source included in case you want to modify.
Ask away if anything's unclear. I bashed out these instructions with little care or editing.
VE3XEC