The Cross has the 4 short pipe sections attached: They go to the 3 end-caps and the bottom one goes to the 3-way TEE.

Or at least you should be willing to accept ( and understand the reasons for ) potentially marginal performance.

Jungle Antenna Formula Series And The

The RSGB series and the U.S.

Marine Corps Antenna Handbook (Reference 88) are also excellent.

The designs are based upon solid engineering but backed up by solid measurements and practical, proven performance in a real environment.

Start there if you are new to this stuff Read it a few hundred times.

An SO-239 chassis connector with coat hanger radiating element and ground radials soldered as shown.

The RG-8U 50 ohm coax connects to it via an PL-259 connector, a vent pipe and some tape makes it happen.

I can receive UHF SATCOM signals with this, especially the ones lower on my horizon.

Harbor Fright sells 332 TIG rods, type ER4043.

About 1.00 each, they fit inside the female contact of an SO-239 coax connector.

They work well. Below are some 18 TIG rods for a bigger connector diameter installation.

Also, write down the span of your arms for measuring antenna wires; for HF, its close enough.

While you are at it, also write down the number of paces you take to cover 100 meters and the local magnetic variation of your current Op Area.

The Antenna Engineers Axiom: You can have High Gain, High Bandwidth or Small Size.

It has high bandwidth to accommodate the wide (30-88 MHz) freq hopping limits of the SINCGARS radios.

It produces a little gain, over a large bandwidth but it is NOT small.

On 7050 KC I used it to work station K6KPH over 200 miles north of here with a GRC-109 running 10 watts on this end.

No one the wiser.

The ubiquitous plastic water bottle makes a handy antenna insulator or lanyard heaving weight with the addition of a little sand or water.

AKA a Cobra Head in Army parlance, useful at a more fixed position installation.

Made from simple hardware store parts, it can be used for an ends-supported dipole, a center-supported dipole a Vee Beam or an inverted Vee antenna.

Or any other freqs you may want to design it for.

If you are after 1000 Km range via the ionosphere, place it about one half wavelength high.).

The 80 and 40 Hot legs are connected to the Red post, the other 2 legs to the Black post this puts the dipoles electrically in parallel.

This is electrically equivalent and works just as well as the AS-2259 NVIS antenna system.

It includes a longer pipe section at the bottom to fit inside the AB-85 mast end.