Cross Antenna

The inspiration for this antenna comes from an article by AL7KK in an old ham radio magazine from the seventy's. Why build this antenna? It is very broad banded , dual banded [2 and 440] has gain over a dipole [it is directional especially on 446 ] and is cheap and tough. The angle between the arms is what is most critical.

I entered the parameters into MMANA and let it run the optimize function. The elements are single wire's bent in the middle at 56 degrees . The elements are each 38.11 inches bent at an angle of 56 degrees between the elements in the shape of a V . This gives you an arm length of 19.05 for each arm of the antenna. Then both elements are connected at the bends, the shield to the lower element and the center conductor to the upper element.

The gain, swr, impedance at 146 mc

L:\Usb Webserver\Root\Ham\cross\446_field.pdf

I drilled a one inch hole at the center of the cross so I could solder the coax to the elements. Since the elements are stainless steel I had to use acid core solder and flux to solder to copper. The black goo is liquid tape which I used to seal the hole and the coax cable. The blue board is cheap plastic cutting board that I cut a groove into with my table saw using a jig I built.

Below is a picture of the jig I built to give me an intersecting groove and a test board with two intersecting grooves already cut in it. The idea is to have two of these boards and clamp the elements between the boards in the grooves.

If you want to play around with this antenna the .maa file can be down loaded here

To see what this antenna looks like mounted in the horizontal plane look here