For years I've been using solid alluminum rod for making small yagis, j poles, slim jims, folded dipoles. I think I've found the ultimate in easy construction.

Coils of 5/16 or 3/8 alluminum tubing from Amazon. I printed a bender to make folded dipoles and slim Jim's. Printed brackets and clamps to hold the coax on the alluminum, and then coat the connection points with liquid rubber for weather proofing.

The tubing is cheap, easy to bend/straighten, light weight, and I can make several antennas with one 30' roll of it.

got any pics to share?

how soft are those coils, how easy to straighten and how well do they keep the new shape?

It's about like copper tube. It's not super hard to bend, but it takes a little work.

I printed jigs and molds to bend it for me but you could do it by hand. Straightening can be done by pulling it through a wood block with a hole just bigger than the tubing. A tubing bender will bend it, but I wanted a tighter radius so I printed some parts to form it with.

This is a vhf slimjim I made for my sister. I have a vhf, and a uhf up. Made a couple for gmrs and gave to my nephew. It's just pretty easy to work with and it's cheap.

This post is relevant to my interests.

Link to tubing?

Thats pretty sweet.

Yea, link to tubing please? What grade of aluminum are you using? Also, don't they usually fill the tubes with something like sand or whatever to prevent flattening on curves? Anyone have any tips on that?

This is the tubing I use for vhf (because it's bend radius is 30mm)
3/8 Fuel Line, 3003 Grade...
This is enough to make 2 slimjim folded dipoles, or 4 jpoles for 2m

And I use 5/16 for uhf (because it's bend radius is 15mm)
Feelers 1060 Aluminum 5/16" OD...
This is enough to make 7 gmrs slimjim or folded dipoles. Probably 5 or 6 for 70cm. Or 14-10 j poles

You can bend it with a wooden block, but I printed formers to fold it around. I can post the print files if that helps.

The coax is stripped and the center and braid are cut to 3/8" long and a copper strip is soldered to them. A plastic clam shell clamps the copper strips to the formed alluminum. Slide the clam shell up and down to set swr. That gets doped pretty heavy with liquid rubber to keep water out.

For mounting, a 1/2" stick of pvc goes through the printed brackets on the back and then that zip ties to your mast/tower.

Please post the print files. That would be handy.

wow, those are nice looking antennas.

I may need to try that aluminum.

I put the print files here:
Forming Prints
The instructions file describes how to use the prints.

And a video of how I'm doing it here:

Got to get you into some better antenna designs though

https://www.w8ji.com/end-fed_vertical.htm

https://www.w8ji.com/Slim%20Jim%20antenna.html

In my early days in radio I too was sucked in to the hype of the J pole antenna. Quickly found out they are crap for the most part and moved on.

They can be passable if you use a coaxial 1/4 wave stub, but that's not a common configuration.

A "double Zepp" as a side-mount antenna at VHF/UHF isn't bad.

"Slim Jim" folded element is a waste of material in addition to being a crappy J pole.

I build a lot of differing types. This is just easy to construct, tune, and hand out.

Now I want to work on antennas, I sat down to figure out expedient ant moats for the hummingbird feeder... lol

3D printing is probably the best thing to happen to amateur radio since SDRs.  I see so many people making so much awesome stuff.