Brakepipe Dipole | yes, really.

I had a dipole centre I bought from eBay or some such, I fancied making a dipole for PMR446, recieve only, obvs!

So, as I had some 3/8 x 24tpi brake pipe fittings and some 4.75mm (3/16″) copper brake pipe kicking about then.. why not!

As usual, set up with the NanoVNR afterward, worked well.

As the brake pipe is quite a large diameter compared to thinner materials that are usually used to make antennas from then it did have quite a nice low SWR across the whole band.

It did need a few turns of coax shortly after the dipole centre to uncouple the antenna from the coax and stop the coax acting as part of the antenna but that was easily sorted with an air would coax choke.

Simple, effective, cheap!