My first antenna build

Since the only equipment that I could afford at the moment is an inexpensive HT about all I can do is change the antenna. That made me decide that I wanted to see what I could build for the radio and I started building a Yagi.
First I started by doing some research looking at 70cm band Yagis. After finding some material regarding suggesting calculations using the wavelength I started making calculations. I had no idea how to make a matching system but plugged away anyway. I eventually came up with the following numbers:

	Me		Online1		Online2
	Length	Position	Length	Position	Length	Position
R	14.78125	0.00000	13.375	0	13.5	0
DR	12.62500	4.81250	13	2.5	13	2.5
DI1	11.50000	10.34150	12.375	5.5	12.5	5.5
DI2	11.37500	15.56250	12	11.25	12	11.5
DI3	11.50000	20.87500	12	17.5	12	17.5
DI4	11.37500	26.09375	11	24	11	24

All of the above measurements are in inches and the position is with respect to the reflector. From those numbers I made the the antenna you see to the left. The SWR was an issue though. I decided to try the 4:1 coax balun. Getting a good SWR with this even turned out to be tricky. I ended up just haphazardly trying different connection points for the braid and checking the antenna analyzer. Eventually I tried wrapping the red wire around the driven element as you see in the picture. From this I get below 2.0 for most of the 70cm band with about 1.3 around 446.0-449.0. I have attached this to my BaoFeng UV-5R and hit a repeater 58+ miles on just 4 Watts. 

If I were to do this again I would use the YagiCad program again to calculate the Gamma match again and get the parts I needed to do it right. However, this project reinforces the idea that you never know how something will work until you do it.