Ultralight 144Mhz portable yagi

As part of my plans for SOTA (Summits On The Air)  operation I want to operate on 144Mhz SSB with a small lightweight yagi.

After much research and a lot of reading up on lightweight yagis (I’m more used to building long high gain yagis for contesting) I have decided to go for a DK7ZB design. A 5 or 6 element yagi with max boom length of 2 metres.

So I headed off to Wickes to see what they have, only choosing Wickes as it was less across town to battle through the traffic coming back. I was looking for PVC pipe and pipe fittings.

Most of the smaller bore pipes less than 38mm seemed just too floppy. The 38mm waste pipe was nice and rigid, but probably was heavier than a suitable aluminium boom would have been. I kept looking and discovered there were two types of 22mm pipe and one was floppy, but one seemed rigid enough. It was a 2m length and although I was thinking of two 1m lengths for portability, I am leaning towards the single piece boom for now.

22mm pipe

22mm pipe

Next element clips in the form of pipe clips. The design of the pipe clips varied, I needed ones with flat sides to drill for the elements. Some have a central rib about as wide as the 3mm elements would be and it was clear it was unlikely I could drill spot on through it. So I managed to find some that didn’t have the rib. A big bag for 59 pence.

Element clips

I also got a pair of T pieces. My thoughts here are to mount the boom through the T piece permanently and drill a hole in the T part to drop over my fishing pole mast.

Boom to mast mount

to be continued……