User:TheAnarcat

From Amateur Radio Wiki
Revision as of 09:16, 14 May 2011 by TheAnarcat (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

I am anarcat. I just passed my basic qualitification in Canada, with honors (so I can operate HF), yay! I am now AKA VA2ANK. -- TheAnarcat 21:50, 10 October 2010 (CDT)

My rig

I uploaded a few photos in this album.

New quad antenna project

I am working on building a new antenna. It is based on this design, which uses a mix of PVC pipes and fiberglass rods, except I adapt it to a 20m antenna and replace the PVC with aluminium for solidity. It should be possible to take the antenna apart and rebuild it if necessary.

Parts list

A sketch of my antenna
Mast
Part Amount Where Weight Price Notes
tripod 1 addison ? 45.56$ ~2' x 2'
3m steel pole 1 downstairs ? 0$ to connect the boom and tripod, 1-1¼"
sandbags 3 home depot 30kg ea. 10.76$ one per leg
plywood 3'x4' attic ? 0$ 1' x 2' used for the beam/pole fitting - found some
Antenna and accessories
Part Amount Where Weight Price Notes
hose clamps 8 home depot ~0 0$ unit price ~2$ - found some
8"x½" plastic tube 1 home depot ~0 0$ for spreader/wire attachment - found some
15' 1¼" fiberglass 8 mgs4u.com (type 1) 17.6lbs ~160$ - actual: 255$CAD (!!) 4.4lbs ea, unit price 19.80$
Clamps 10-pack dxengineering ~0 14.95$ to secure the feedline
4m aluminium boom 2 DX engineering 2.5lbs 24.90$
500' of wiring 1 DX engineering N/A 74.95$ only parts of this will be used (120' to be more precise)
Antenna (parts in shipping)
Part Amount Where Weight Price Notes
U clamps and bolts 4 home depot Rick Adams ~0 0$ included in the beam/pole fitting
boom/pole plate 1 Rick Adams ? 45$ + 30$ shipping need to drill holes, includes reinforcement pole
spider 2 Rick Adams 2.3lbs 70$USD 14oz ea. 40$/ea, seems strong and sturdy, and Rick helped me through email, let's try!
Antenna (parts to order)
Nothing! Just waiting for parts to be shipped now. :)

Total planned price: ~373.77$

Total planned weight: ~25lbs++ - not including 180lbs of sandbags, the pole and tripod.

Notes

  • Gauge: 10-16 AWG is okay (see AWG, that is 1.2-2.5mm or 1/10" - 1/20"), and can be insulated, according to this page
  • Using welding wire is a good idea, as the lightning bolt quad uses
  • I was suggested Dubo for electric supplies

Current blocker(s)

None - waiting for parts to be shipped.

Oh, and it never stops raining here, so this could be an issue.

Discarded approaches

Those parts were considered during the design phase but were discarded for various reasons.

Part Amount Where Price Notes
welding wire aluminium 270' spool canadian tire? ? example: Aluminium 5356 MIG alloy - too hard to find
4m 1"PVC 1 home depot ? according to Rick, this could create interference
5-way 1"PVC conn. 2 creativeshelters.com 3.08$ couldn't order, they don't accept canadian zip codes, and shipping is 30$ anyways, and I don't trust PVC
1"x½" copper pipe 8 home depot ~5$ we'll use tie-wraps instead for spreader/wire attachment
8m ½"PVC 4 home depot ? PVC pipes are too flexible to hold properly, we need fiberglass
AUG 12 copper wire 44.4m ??? 29.32$ (addison?) 48.64$ pour 2x12 22m (dubo) addison doesn't have bare wire, and dubo only has bare up to 8 gage, too big (it's mainly for grounds) copper wire never comes bare, and i may have better luck finding mig soldering wire like Aluminium-5356

I had a lot of problems finding proper parts (pipes, raw materials like wiring and so on) in Montreal, which made building the antenna quite tricky, as a lot of things needed to be ordered online.

Références

Je collecte ici des bons sites au sujet du ham radio.

Software

This needs to be merged into Software 

  xplanet -latitude 45.5 -longitude -73.66 -wait 60 -label -projection azimuthal -fork -radius 90

  ibp FN35EM

... others to follow, there's a whole hamradio section in debian.

Stuff to buy next

Retrieved from "http://wiki.hamtools.org/index.php?title=User:TheAnarcat&oldid=4953"