I have designed and built the adjustiwave so that it can be made with standard components and basic tools. If you can do a bit of DIY then the chances you could build a variable length antenna system. Below is some information on the components I’ve used.
Radial & Radial Wires – Stainless Steel 7x7mm, 1mm diameter. Each band, 80m through 2m is colour coded and wires are marked with adhesive lined heatshrink. How much less efficient is stainless steel over copper? MMANA tells us its 0.4db worse than copper. Would you notice it in the real world? Probably not.
Reels – Wide arbor Fly Fishing reel spools. These must have the capacity to hold 25 meters of wire and 25 meters of braid.
Choke balun – Fair-Rite FT240-43 core, DXW142 Coax. I’ve only tested to to 400w CW due to my licence conditions. This will easily handle in excess of 1KW SSB. I have checked the common mode attenuation figures on my NanoVNA are they are as follows.
80m – 27.85db
40m – 33db
20m- 36.97db
15m – 33.8db
10m – 30.56db
6m – 24.19db
There is some debate if you actually require a Choke Balun on a ground mounted vertical. As I sometimes use the antenna with the elevated radial, its perhaps beneficial to use one. If your planning to use it ground mounted with a radial system then you can probably omit this.
SO239 Socket – Gold plated compression fitting
Clamp fittings – RSB hydraulic clamp halfs. The clamp used to connect the top plate to the mast is a class 1 fitting (6 -12mm). 12mm is standard to fit the second section of the Spiderbeam 12m HD. The bottom clamp halfs that attach the adjustiwave body the the bottom section of the Spiderbeam 12m HD are a class 6 fitting (52mm used as standard). The bottom clamp plates will however accept a class 5 or a class 6 clamp half (32-57mm). This is to allow you to fit the adjustiwave to almost any pole/mast.
Clamp Plates – Nylon 66 currently being used as I had some lying around. I cut these on a bandsaw so the cuts are not perfect (but perfectly functional).
Nuts / Bolts / Fittings – Stainless steel used throughout
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