Building another YU7EF duoband antenna (3)

  

   Slow progress is made. I wish I had this antenna ready before the ES season. But unfortunately it takes time to build and time is a precious thing. I can't help experimenting with this design as well. I had no angle aluminium to mount on the boom to fit the (6m) dipole elements on. So I thought of angled weather resistant plastic. Side effect is that it probabely prevents disturbance from the boom. I really don't know how much and of course I don't know how this plastic behaves over time. I decided to take the risk. The material is also used for cladding on buildings.

Of course this gave me a mechanical challenge. The plastic looks solid but it isn't. The outside is solid 1mm thick plastic but the inside is a kind of foam. When you mount it on the boom with the bolts and nuts, like I did, the long end will move downward along with the pressure of the nuts. I needed to invent something to push it back to a straight position. I used tiny pieces of angled aluminium for that and bend it up a little. It worked out very well so far. I could nicely tune the plastic parts till they were flat with the boom.

When writing this post I just thought about the plastic foam. I think I need to protect the sides with a rubber like coating. I have some liquid gasket material in stock. I think that would be perfect.

Update 18-5-2023

I abandon this experimental plastic dipole mount. I tried it today but it did not work out like I had thought. Searching for angled aluminium thick enough to use now.