So I had my HF antenna built, but I needed something for VHF and UHF so that I could participate in local nets on my repeater without sitting in my truck all night. However, I live (for now) in a community with a restrictive HOA. My solution was the same as with my dipole, hide it behind my house. The quickest option was to purchase a small magnet mount antenna, but those require something metallic to attach the magnet to. This also serves as a groundplane to help with the RF gain of the antenna. My solution was to get a sheet of galvanized metal from my local Home Depot, and with a quick use of my tin-snips and some self-tapping screws, build a small shelf for the mag mount antenna to sit on. However, this didn't give quite enough of a metallic surface to act as a groundplane, so I added what is called a counterpoise to the shelf to help with having a sufficient groundplane to allow the antenna to function with as much efficiency as possible.
My Parts List:
- 1 sheet of galvanized sheet metal
- 20" of 12AWG stranded wire
Time to Completion:
Here is a pic:
I need to add a piece of 2x4 inside of the box part to make it a bit stiffer, but it works well as it is. One note of interest, before I added the counterpoise, I was not able to hit the repeater that I prefer to frequent, after adding it, I am able to make contact. Proper RF grounding is important!
73,
Richard, KK4JDO
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