UKAC Antenna

When the family was younger I had a bit more free time so used to go out on a Tuesday evening and play at being a contester on VHF. I enjoyed the contests because it was a bit of fun. I didn’t really care about the place on the leaderboard, just a bit of fun. As the kids went to more and more clubs and after school stuff my evenings were spent doing other things. Now they are pretty much grown up the demand is less and I’m not a fan of Netflix.

So, over christmas I spent an hour or so on the top of the hill at Sandwidth with the FT817 and Sotabeams SB270 antenna, this time on 70cms and it reminded me of how much I enjoyed it. So I thought I’d rekindle the idea of a better (read longer) antenna for portable use.

The DK7ZB antenna pages have given me loads of ideas in the past but only a few actual makes. This time I have planned out what I call the ‘common boom’ VHF/UHF antenna. I wanted the same idea as the SB270 i.e. a beam drilled with multiple holes for both 2m and 70cm. teh design has sort of started so its worth sharing a bit of the progress. Working idea is a 5 element 2m and 9 element 70cm beam with a common feed. All the dimensions are on the ultralight section of DK7ZB’s website so it should, in theory just be a mechanical job to design it all :-)