This weekend I worked up the courage and installed my Diamond X510 on my roof. It wasn’t easy due to the pitch of my roof and lack of any safety gear and also making sure the ladder was secured to the house. I don’t picture myself climbing up onto that roof again.
In the above picture I designed and fabricated my own mounting straps to mount the antenna to the cast iron vent pipe.
The support pipe is galvanized dipped and then powder coated white to survive the elements
Here are roof brackets just after being cut with the 4kw laser. Brackets are made of 14ga (0.074) Staintless
All the hardware used in the installation was made out of stainless. I didn’t want a nice trail of rust running down my roof.
Other than the anxiety of climbing onto my roof , It was fun. I couldn’t wait to get back into the house, run the RG213 through the wall and start transmitting.
Using Diamonds radiation pattern on the antenna I calculated the coverage of my antenna.
I think it calculated a little too much but it’s pretty close. From moving my antenna from 5ft off the ground to the top of my house using low loss cable and Type-N connectors, I see a major difference and wondered why I never bought a commercially built antenna. I notice that I can now hit stations further north from my QTH. before I couldn’t get past 10mi north. Now I can hit the W1UWS repeater on top of Mt. Ascutney in Ascutney VT (100mi north of my QTH) and I could now hit Mt. Graylock in N. Adams MA (60mi Northwest of my QTH) and many repeaters in the Berkshires. In the south direction I can now get repeaters in Litchfield and Hartford Counties in CT. Compared to the J-Poles I can now contact 40 additional 2m repeaters. So overall I am extremely pleased of the results.
Now to get the Butternut Installed.