Moving On - To Copper Pipes!

So, whilst I waited for my brain to digest all the new antenna information, I looked around for something else to get on air with.

There was a lot of copper pipe lying around - the stuff you use for plumbing houses.  That seemed a very good idea.  The 10m band was running pretty strong at the end of 2008, so being fairly small wavelengths, I decided to cut some copper tubes into a horizontal, fixed dipole.

The copper water pipe 10m dipole.  Very basic, very cheap, but it gets you on air!

Well it took a bit of trimming to resonate, but even just attached temporarily to a plastic bin at a metre above ground, it got an easy contact 5/7 into Greece.  When it was up on a 4 m pole, it was getting me 5/9 reports into the eastern seaboard of the US.  Not bad!  What's more, it was (with nylon washing line guys fixed to chopped-up fence posts with cable ties) very wind resistant, and held-up through all the violent 85mph+ gales of winter.  Even if it hadn't, it would be very easy - and cheap - to repair.

This kept me going for a bit, and it even managed, with the help of an ATU, to get a few European contacts on 40m, although it was obviously hopelessly inefficient for that band.

But the important bit that all those retired, stacked 5-element, $3000 SteppIR owners miss is that new hams just want to speak to someone - and it doesn't really matter where.  It's a miracle, when you're new to amateur radio, that a signal from a clapped-out mobile rig wired-up to a copper pipe antenna crosses the Atlantic and that someone answers a CQ call.  It also gives you the confidence to move ahead with building your own antennas, which is a very good move if you want to save a lot of money.

For the next step I took to improve my station, tune in soon...