220 Mhz Ground Plane Antenna

I will be needing a dedicated 220 MHz antenna for an upcoming project and needed it to be small. I had built a nice 220 Mhz J-pole that turned out being to large and the "home congress" rejected it's installation. A quarter wave ground plane is nice and small so it can be made "stealth". I had build other SO-239 connector antennas before, in fact one of my first antenna for 2 meters was one of this type and I soldered all of it and just used 12 AWG bare solid wire. It worked out great, but one drawback of the solid copper wire it that it not that stiff and if the wind blows hard for several days your antenna will get deformed and you will need to straighten it. I had always heard of people building them with welding rods (much stiffer than copper wire). A quick search on the internet yielded that basic dimensions AI4JI's website for a 220 Mhz antenna and I began work.  

I had these BernzOmatic rods that I got with a little torch years ago and there were 5 rods in the package. This is the perfect number however each rod is only 12 inches long. Before using these rods the flux was removed. The easiest way is to just take a hammer and gently pound on the rod until it crumbles off, then sand it clean  with sand paper.

The solution to the short rods was solved by using 2 inch lengths of 1/4 inch copper pipe. This is the soft copper tubing you use for connecting a ice maker to your frig. As you can see, I flatten part if it so I can make the radials 13.4 inches long.

The flatten section also allows an easy way to bend the radials at the required 45 degree angle.

For the radiator or vertical element, I just used a ring lug to extend it's length and it add safety by not being so pointed.

Here is the completed antenna before being painted. The antenna drops into a 3/4 inch PVC pipe that has been split on the ends so a house clamp will hold the antenna firmly in place. After the paint dries I will post more pictures and the mounting arrangement. The SWR was below 1.3:1 across the whole band.