Feed Lines (details)

First Version

First version of feed lines was originally made with 6mm aluminium tubing with soldered joints.
In two years they have shown to be rather weak and difficult to repair. Actually the welding was weakening the metal and making it very prone to break (The pictures in the previous pages refer to the first version).

Current Version

For second (and current) version I took a completely different approach, dipoles and half feed line (5 quarter wave length) made of single 8mm aluminium tubing (so to avoid the joints at the dipole) .

Dipole

The rest of the lines also made with the same 8mm diameter, the connections made with special joints (worked at the lathe) in such form not to change the characteristic impedance of the line.

Joints


The following picture shows the lines with connection points:

Lines


And finally an overall view of the result without any welding

Result


By changing the feed lines i did not see any significant difference compared to the original (same sun noise) other than a slightly better SWR