Thanks. So annealing is the must. What did you use to heat it up? I'll be using #8 wire. Did you have to use a bender of any type or just pliers?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Guimont" dguimon1@san.rr.com To: "Mike Ryan" mryan301@comcast.net Cc: amsat-bb@amsat.org Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2008 11:04 PM Subject: Re: Your posting on AMSAT
I saw your posting on AMSAT-BB about building a quadfilar. I have those files and have been experimenting with various omnis for SAT work. So far diploes, verticals, turnstiles, and a moxon. The quadfilar was next on my list. I even scored some copper clad coax for the task. For 70 cm it seems pretty tough to do the bending and get it right. May I ask how you did that (a tubing bender, pliers, other) and if you heated the copper wire first like they suggest.
Anneal the copper tubing for the three copper tubing filars, and it is very easy to shape, simply mark the dimensions on the tubing, and bend away...the length is much more important than the diameter of the bends.
And make good solder joints...heat proof dialectric on the coax one,. of course....teflon, and there are some others...
Pulling for P3E...