Hello I have been working on creating low-cost telemetry radios for tracking wildlife. I am confident that many people could develop tracking tags for VHF frequencies between 148-173 MHz, but that’s not the main point. I have been experimenting and testing antenna designs that are incredibly cheap or almost cost-free for this project. I’d like to share my ideas and tests. I might not be the most skilled researcher, but I just want to share with everyone to help improve our project.

I created a lightweight, easy-to-assemble antenna for fieldwork that can withstand heavy use. I faced difficulties with building a Yagi antenna. Many of you may be familiar with it—it’s designed for finding the direction of radio signals. Even though we can build one, the main challenge lies in its size; it’s large and can’t be folded for easy storage. I experienced that myself. Even though commercially available antennas exist, I still see storage as a problem. So, I created an antenna using a tape measure, PVC pipe, and connectors, making it more durable and portable. The VSWR value is within an acceptable range for use.

When I first built it without using an antenna analyzer, it still worked fine. I tested and refined it several times. You can see from the pictures that soldering is easy to do. This is just a small example of what I’ve tested in different activities.
 

This is just a small example of what I’ve experimented with so far. Some details may not be entirely clear, and I apologize for that. I’ll update later on other frequencies. Wishing everyone the best of luck with their experiments, from my small contribution.