Submitted by JonathanGuthrie on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 10:04
Well, I finally went and did it. I built the 6-meter quadrifilar helix I've been talking about for years. Okay, it's not quite done, I'm waiting for a decent pair of wire strippers to arrive, but a week ago I took a four-inch PVC pipe, some 3/8 inch dowels, some Romex, and adhesive and fabricated a QFH antenna. I used a short Python program I wrote to determine the dimensions and, well, I did it wrong. The short wire in what I built should be the long wire at the operating frequency, so the whole thing is too long for the 52 MHz design frequency.
Submitted by JonathanGuthrie on Thu, 06/09/2016 - 15:36
This weekend, is the ARRL's June VHF Contest. I've got quadrifilar helix (QFH) antennas for 2m and 70cm, and they can work for the so-called "weak signal" modes, but I have no 6m antennas at all. I'm thinking of making a 6m QFH antenna to go with the others, but I don't know I can get it done by this weekend. Actually, I'm thinking of making a 10m QFH antenna, too. I've done the calculations needed to figure the sizes it would be.
Anyway, that's what I'm working on now. I'll let you guys know what happens.