A rite of passage of every ham is building our own antenna and as my first test, I picked an end-fed antenna kit from the ARRL shop. This was my first kit and the first time soldering in long time so I expected some mistakes along the way. However, some of the mistakes were made due to the instructions in On the Air magazine missing some steps or not clear.
The biggest mistake was to not remove the enamel on the wire before soldering it to the connectors. I discovered this with my trusty multimeter. I had to unsolder the connections, scrape of the enamel and resolder.
An amateur soldering issue was that I touched the case with the iron several times and it melted the rim. I had to clean up the rim in order to get the lid on again.
I found that the HF Kits instructions were better, especially when making the external connections.
Overall, it was a fun project and I will surely build more antennas in the future.
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| Primary side connections and counterpoise |
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