user guide guide welcome everybody this is the user guide guide
not quite sure what to entitle this right now your intelligent people this is about the 12.4
meter telescopic 40 foot seven elements giving you eight nine bands i've forgotten that lots count
the whole of hf uh so well first of all let's just go and find the user guide so all you need to do
is do a search for dx commander user guide i mean that can't be well user spelt wrong
google knows where it is okay and here we are and i haven't putted this up for a while
with hopefully swapping to our new website soon but anyway you can see it says 12.4
i'll put it right in the middle of the screen there it is there
signature user guide so we'll open that up and here it is i am not going through the whole thing
i'm going to cover with you the three things that i think you need to know
because if you've got the confidence to build this and you should have anybody can i mean
evie who's 10 built a classic all right without help from her dad but she did all the work right
so you can do it as well unless you're nine right who knows so what's the first thing we need to do
i'll just run through as i'm chatting right i'll just let you see some pictures and a little bit of
b-roll as i'm chatting away so the seven elements it does 80 and 30 on one element so we're going to
cover a coil in a minute all right we're going to cover the idea of a hinge for you in a minute and
then there was one other thing and i've totally forgotten what it is so we'll come to that in a
minute what the hell was that oh yes uh we're gonna cover the actual bowl itself okay so the
pole has a screw cap you take that cap off and you put on the ground plate the one with the tab
it is all in the user guide right everything on this kit i've intentionally made
quite a tight fit okay so on the driven plate that's the one that has all the elements going up
if you look on the inside diameter of the hole i've just noticed and i've already shipped a load
so i can't fix there's a tiny pip where the water jet machine just mist you might want to just file
that off bit of sandpaper doesn't matter it is still a tight fit i've done that intentionally
okay so that's just covered that the pole the first is a 12 section pole the first nine section
should pull out on average between 95 centimeters and 102 and i can't remember how many inches that
is about 40 inches there we are and when it's completely the top three sections by the way
we averaged about 100 and 400 and 506 centimeters so that's going to be about 42 ish inches
but i'm only saying that in case you measured oh this one's only 30 inches that means it's
10 inches still embedded in there all right so get your partner and your friend or whatever
and just give it a tug if it pulls so far out you can start to see where there's no paint
you've gone a wee bit too far just go in a bit we'll seal all these joins up anyway but a massive
clamp on so it doesn't matter the third joint down what number is that number two number three
doesn't have a um hose clamp instead i want you to do seven eight nine turns of template 10 flex tape
that we give you i want you to 10 flex it all but the 3m 10 flex insulation tape go around that join
and just above it nice you know fatten it out we supply two zip ties they're releasable zip ties
you can use any zip tie i've tested these and i like them put it on and get your pliers and twist
it back to get the final click out that zip tie only the one at the top when you run out we supply
nine hose clamps the last one the next day or the day after when you think oh it's all done now just
remember to go back and see if you can get one more click out of that that's all so that's the
poll i'll cover the 80 meter element because it's mostly complicated the rest of them were a breeze
before i did that i just want to do the hinge now i took some it's the second time i've made this
video we took some footage and with this actually we got a nice gimbal for it and everything else
the audio failed i've rebooted the phone now it's all working out but anyway
you can make make a pseudo hinge get yourself a short piece of broom handle or a bit of aluminium
doesn't have to be the right diameter or anything but take the rug up rubber bung at the screw cap
put it at the base with a bit of paracord at the bottom and guide that to one or two guys takes
all this is in the manual okay really close i'm talking a hundred and fifty eight inches give or
take six inches away from the base a couple of guy stakes on that um tube then when you
lift the whole thing up the base won't move that's what might lift up a bit but it will
soon come down when the center of gravity changes pseudo hinge i've tried it it works
80 meters so 80 meters at it says it in here it ages so on page 11 we've got i don't cut
slightly longer than you need 20 i think i said 22 and a half meters it's all in the manual
measure from the bottom to 7.78 meters buy yourself a dual tape measure the whole of
the world's got centimeters and normally inches on the back apart from you guys in the usa to
just all inches get one with centimeters as well right it's kind of a little bit
more accurate and easier in science terms to use these terms 7.78 20 something feet
get your 10 flex and just mark 7.78 right so slow right down and i'll show some pictures okay here
is a picture at the bottom of the coil coming up so down from the right hand side of this picture
seven point seven eight meters away it comes up you need to stop there and make
a bit of a loop use some of your templates tem flex tape by the way we'll replace all templates
apart from the ones around the joins of the pole with glue lined heat shrink we'll do that a couple
of days time right we're just getting the thing built up now get a piece of shock cord and put
it through this little loop that you've made and go up it's about a foot and a half give or take
to the next uh which is about 45 centimeters up to the next spreader plate come up there
leave yourself 30 centimeters one foot cut it off just so you've got some free here now then about
eight inches 200 millimeters less than that 180 ml says it in the manual do another knot because
the second knot stop a knot and by the way how to make a stopper knots all in the manual right
because the two knots one is going to support the element going down the pole and the other element
is going to the other knot is going to support the element going up the pole that's all so we
can keep it tensioned so we have a bit of a gap we then go around again the let's find it in there
here we are there's a there's a picture on it here on page 12
i've got 99 turns i think on this maybe 100 or 98 i can't remember
you go around you can see actually i even did this you can see the one on the right here on
the screen there's a little knot and then there's this i call it slack because what we don't want is
tension getting getting mixed up with the coil it just can start to pull the coil apart and
everything that's the reason for the two knots okay so if you look at it our two loops are inside
the two knots so when there isn't any tensioned up i mean a picture is a thousand words isn't it we
gotta make header tail of this in my opinion my picture's slightly wrong i would say my
knot here right is about that much too far to the left be better off just down a bit because
i can't tension that very hard before i start unwinding that coil there we are
that's the main thing the rest of it just get yourself a cup of coffee or whatever else
either get it on your ipad or not a phone because it's a big pdf it's 17 18 pages all printed off i
printed mine off today and just go through it with your highlighter pen oh yes i completely
understand that now i completely understand that now if you get mixed up we have a discord server
where support is offered to people like you go oh can't get this to work for whatever reason
you know how does this bit going discord dot io slash dx commander okay you don't need to
they'll say would you want to download the app and everything you don't need the app you can just
log in with the browser by the way and um you'll get a password whatever use your email you know
use your call sign as well so we know who you are otherwise we get you know people
going you know harry potter things like that i think we'll answer harry potter's
inquiry it's a lot easier if we know it's you know whiskey for half a bravo charlie you know
read the manual read the user guide okay and we'll all be fine i'm about to go to cornwall for a week
i need it so we've been working flat out enjoy you as a guide enjoy your 12.4 i have
genuinely been having a ball with mine best antenna i've ever made all right so there we are
i think it's about time i shut up now so all the best and i'll see you in the next one bye for now
you