I wanted to do something a little more portable this weekend, so I decided to make a signal-stick-esque antenna.
I ordered the following items:
I deliberately bought slightly larger gauge wire than the BNC could accept as I wanted something a little thicker. This meant using some sandpaper to whittle down the end of the wire to fit into the crimp socket of the BNC pin. Only took a few minutes. I then crimped the pin, and (not very well) soldered for a llittle extra security.
I am currently waiting for the heat shrink to arrive, so am unable to do the next section, so will update this post when that arrives later.
In the meantime, I rustled up a base and a top on my 3D printer.
The heat shrink arrived. I messed up on the overlay by the base cap unfortunately. I think I was afraid of melting the cap…
And the end cap is messy up close, bu ok from a distance.
So I’ll call this one a prototype. It works ok however. It happily allows my ID-52E in the house to hook into a repeater about 9 miles away.
On 16th May I tried again. This time I made a red antenna.
