Back on July 17, 2022, I made a post here about building a DIY Moxon antenna for 6m based on plans in the ARRL book Magic Band Antennas for Ham Radio by Bruce Walker N3JO. It was made of flat aluminum bars instead of round tubing. The problem with it was that the ends drooped significantly, which reduced the directionality.
I expected this, so I used a cross instead of a ‘T’ in the middle of the boom. That let me add a vertical extension of PVC pipe in the middle of the boom. I drilled a hole in the top of a PVC cap, mounted a (stainless steel) eye-bolt in the hole, and put it on top of the extension. (With the mast lying on the ground, of course.) Then I was able to tie paracord from the eye-bolt to each end of the antenna as shown in this picture. I am more concerned about accidents with the lawn mover than stealth in my back yard, so you can see that I used bright safety orange and safety yellow-green paracord for the guy lines. (In fact, my neighbor, also an engineer, commented that this was a good idea, to prevent tripping.)
I used the “Orange Screw” product mentioned here by others to anchor the guy lines to the ground. I also used hose clamps, in addition to the mast’s own clamps, to keep the mast from telescoping inward.
It’s important to remember that the only two knots to use with antennas are:
- the taut-line hitch and
- the bowline knot.
(To help with pronouncing the later, try to remember that it was named for the front end of a boat, where sailors use it.) These knots were covered in the Tech Night presentations about Field Day.
Aron, W1AKI