So we went out on the 70cms UKAC last Tuesday and Chris very kindly lent me his Diamond beam, which worked a treat. 70 QSO’s and some DX to Germany.

It was an interesting band, especially as there are not so many operators in IO91 so you have a better chance of getting further. So if I am going to carry on with these 70cms portable ops I am going to need my own antenna. And my weapon of choice is the Loop Fed Array LFA designs from Justin - the man behind Innov Antennas.

And here it is…….




Some might say is might be getting slightly obsessive for a portable antenna or as Martin nicely put it.

“If you make it much bigger you won't need a radio just put your QSL card on the end and pass it to them”

It is 20 elements and you can see the spacing is quite a bit different when you compare it to the 15 element Diamond.

Construction follows the 2M and 6M ones earlier in the blog and below is a detail of the matching stub.





As I haven’t got a UHF analyser I don’t know how well it matches yet, so I suppose the proof will be on the next Tuesday I am up on the hill.

Give me a shout to try it out.