Hardware Chat

Hi - regarding building a cheap antenna. Google flowerpot antenna. There’s plenty videos and design on the net. Reasonably straight forward to put together. Basically you need coax and some plastic conduit pipe, tin foil or Aluminium tape.  Works very well 2m & 70cm.(Analogue & Digital) Can open all repeaters some as far as 40 miles away from street level using a 5 watt handset. Enclosed some pics, I’ve now got my secured high but for testing purposes used a decorators pole..Plastic pipe 3 meters only costs about £2.50 out a builders merchants or toolstation etc.(even better if you can source stuff for free) have fun building 

73 MM7JDT 

also don't skimp on the coax, if you pay an extra £1 a metre for something like RG213 instead of cheap and cheerful RG58 on a 10m run you will get about an extra watt to the antenna from UV5r

do a google for "coax loss calculator" put in your coax type and length and see how much you lose, also remember the loss works in both directions, so more power out, but also recieved stations could be an S point or 2 higher which also means you may hear stations you never heard before