NIce portable Yagi...wait, is that...tape measure?
Originally published at AmazinglyRustic. You can comment here or there.
The Fulton County Amateur Radio Club is holding a Fox hunt on July 31st. A fox hunt, for the non-HAM friends, is an exercise in radio direction finding (RDF). The premise is that one club member (the fox) will venture out into the county to an undisclosed location and transmit at routine intervals in a predetermined frequency. The hunters then use directional antennas and transceivers to triangulate the signal and find the fox. I have most of the equipment I need minus a good directional, portable antenna. I wanted one that would work for the 2 meter band and could be constructed easily. I found a few prefabricated antennas (arrow antenna's is a good source), but really wanted to try making one. I found many pages on-line describing a portable 3 element yagi using PVC pipe and a steel tape measure. The benefit is that it is small and light weight, has very deep null on the backside (for searching when close to the transmitter), and is very inexpensive to build. I think I have $11 in parts on this one. The director and reflector are solid lengths while the driven element is connected with a hairpin match. There is also an 8 wrap balun to choke out stray RF. There are much better sites on-line describing he construction and operation, just google "tape measure yagi".