Chopping board 2m quarter wave ground plane

Today I chopped up Ygritte, who was a quarter wave vertical for 11m I made when I came back to CB. She's been laying there dead on the floor of the loft for a long o' time now so thought I would make use of her.

Her top half a metre with tuning stub (smaller bit of pipe clamped firm with a jubilee clip) became the 2m quarter wave radiator, and two more half metre sections became the two legs. Yes, just two, as described in my nutty ramble in THIS post. Screwed down on to a cheapy chopping board.. we have a nicer glass one with pictures of ducks on we use in the kitchen now. Small bits of scrap copper wire sandwiched between the pipes and the fixing clamps have electrical choc blocs connecting them to the end of the coax.



With it sat up in the loft, about 6m ish above the ground outside, seems to be working well enough for what it is. SWR not measured with any accurate equipment, but the radio is reporting highest SWR of 1.3:1 on 2m and highest of 1.5:1 on 70cm. Looks to have been a bit of a lift on this evening which no doubt helped, but still, it was great to get a few contacts in the log. FT8, 10W in to it brought a couple of 50 mile plus England contacts, one into Wales, and one in to France at 215 miles F6EGD. PSK Reporter showed many other stations around the south of the UK picking up my signal a couple also in Belgium.

It wasn't meant to be a DX machine, just needed something good enough to get into the Swindon repeaters and to listen for the ISS. Job done I say. Fiery red head Ygritte lives on as another, Melisandre. If anyone looks at it and says "that will never work" then heed the words of both of them "You know nothing..."

Great posting Neal as ever and good to see you still enjoying aspects of antenna experimentation.  

I've utilised those cheap plastic chopping boards many times myself but often after the mercies of a saw to 'chop' them down even further. (They make great dipole centres.)

I can see where your references of a flux capacitor elsewhere having a bearing now. Can this take 1.21 Jigo-Watts too?

Something similar used to be quite common but made from wire and hung in a window space for those venturing into the Ham hobby on 2m years back. Amazing what can be done to get yourself onto the local repeaters.

Been trying to catch some VHF tropospheric action myself but need to hook up another FT8 setup for my alternative rig. Not enough USB ports on my laptop and need to switch the new collinear between rigs so tied up with a few projects myself now. Sometimes a shack-in-a-box would be handy but I do like that I can monitor many things at once with separate rigs.


Always great to see and read what you've been up to.

All the best,
Victor

Thank you Victor. You probably know me enough by now that I won't even be putting legal Intermediate level powers through it lol, let alone God forbid an unfortunate weather accident level powers. If the joining wires to the elements were swapped out for heavy braided straps I don't see any reason why it couldn't take the current Full legal limit though, those pipes are pretty heavy duty.

Not that huge power is needed on that band. I haven't done the 2m contests for many months, it was just getting a bit too samey for me, but I joined in to try for just a few contacts last night to see how it worked. I ran my usual 10W into both FM and SSB. I spoke with a few of the Swindoners on FM, the furthest being portable at 32 miles using just a mag mount on his car because of the high winds, who gave me 59+30 whilst we tested before the contest. On SSB, where most people use horizontal polarized beams I still managed a couple of 45+ mile contacts and one at 66 miles on this vertical. Very flat conditions last night too, no noticeable tropo.

I'll try it on 70cm next week, if I don't hear anyone on there before. But for now, if anyone is looking for a very easy cheap 2m antenna to make for their loft then this may do you.