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Building antennas seems to be getting to be a bit of a habit for me. This time I’ve bought a kit, for evaluation purposes. No really it is.

I was trying to think of a project that I could use at MX0WRC (Workington and district amateur radio club) to help give some direction to some of the members who may never have built anything other than the kit they built for their intermediate licence. So, as I’ve been roped in to give a talk on my portable set up, which consists of what I thought were low cost antennas I thought I’d found the right direction.

Low cost is not what I came across when researching simple antennas. It seemed that I was way off the mark for commercial offerings until I found a company in Germany called Nuxcom. They supply what look like simple yagi kits at realistic prices. By which I mean the cost of the materials isn’t prohibitive (For example from a raw material supplier 25mm box section can be bought for as little as £6-8 for a 1m length, enough for a 3 element 2m yagi and round tube for similar cost – and this isn’t cheap Chinese metal this is western European fully traceable materials! Don’t even get me started on the price of pipe clamps)

So, to placate my ever growing concern that prices are rising higher than a bankers bonuses, without any real justification I ordered one of the larger kits from Nuxcom, a 2 element lightweight 6m yagi. Purchasing was a bit drawn out as I placed an order and the ‘quote’ was returned with shipping costs added in a few hours later. But at £35 I was prepared to take a gamble, even is a third of the cost was shipping.

I’m expecting the kit before the weekend and I’ll do a little write up when it arrives. On the face of it the kit looks fairly simple in design without any bells and whistles, just what we need to add to the J pole, vertical and dipole designs that I plan on demonstrating.

What I’m really hoping for is a good value, simple lightweight antenna than doesn’t cost the earth so that the club members can learn and experiment without breaking the bank. More later.

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