I have used schedule 40 PVC for several antennas from HF thru 440 MHz without a problem. It does have a dielectric effect however that you must take into account.
There is another plastic pipe called CPVC that does absorb RF at the higher frequencies. You don't want to use that. To make sure your plastic pipe will work ok, do the microwave test. Put a short length of the plastic pipe in a microwave along with a coffee mug filled with water. Run the microwave for a while. Then see if the plastic gets hot. If it does, you don't want to use it for RF. 73 and aloha, Eric KH6CQ --- On Wed, 8/12/09, AJ <[email protected]> wrote: From: AJ <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Repeater-Builder] Re: 2M Vertical Dipoles To: [email protected] Date: Wednesday, August 12, 2009, 5:05 AM Does really PVC absorb or RF or just act as a dielectric? The reason I ask is I'm looking at encasing an antenna project for the sake of weatherproofing and PVC would fit the bill rather easily. 73, AJ, K6LOR On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 9:49 AM, AA8K73 GMail <aa8...@gmail. com> wrote: AJ, if you replace the steel mast with a fiberglass one, won't you still have the metallic feed line there? Doesn't PVC absorb RF? 73, Mike AJ wrote: On this same topic of the mast-less Antennex/Laird dipole arrays, has anyone attempted to top mount these from a fiberglass mast to minimize interaction with the normal steel pole? I have quite a few surplus fiberglass poles left that would likely work, even for side mounting on 1/2 wave spacing from the tower... On that same note, does anyone have construction plans for a dipole array (not necessarily folded dipoles)? I remember seeing a set of plans somewhere quite a while ago - we're thinking of constructing one but encasing the dipoles in fiberglass or PVC to try to protect from the weather and debris at our site (top of a large farm field)... 73, AJ, K6LOR __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
