I've decided to give my homebrew 40 meter antenna project a label of it's own on the blog so it will be easier to group together the posts that follow the progression of my first high frequency antenna. By clicking on the label "40 Meter Vertical" located at the end of the post blogger will display only my posts sharing the same label. Because I'm busy weeks or months can go by before I find the time to work on the next part of my antenna project. Due to the technical nature I believe these posts are best viewed together for greater perspective.
This afternoon I used a doweling jig to drill holes though the base of the antenna mast and fix in place a fiberglass foot section. The fiberglass tubing is the same material used to make the loading coil form at the top of the antenna mast. The non-conductive fiberglass not only isolates the antenna from the mounting support but also provides the structural integrity required to keep the antenna in a vertical position once deployed in the field.
The 19 1/2" foot section provides room for mounting the match box and in my case conveniently slips down into the steel mast pipe of my heavy duty tripod for portable use. In a permanent set up the fiberglass foot section could be bracketed to a wooden post or attached with U-bolts and mounting plate to a standard metallic tube mast.
The Foot is made up of two pieces of tubing that telescope smoothly into each other and together make a strong unit. A single stainless steel bolt will connect the two pieces and also provide a stop once the foot section is inserted into the tripod. A close inspection of the image below shows the precision of my cuts. The mating surfaces of aluminum and fiberglass meet up perfect.
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