Prep all surfaces you want to solder on by using a sand paper. This will remove oxidation on the copper and allows for the solder to stick and bond.

1. I don't have a blow torch or anything fancy so I just heat up the pipe real good and start applying solder to the heated area. The solder will melt instantly and make a chemical bond to the copper when it is hot enough.





2. With a help from a friend, we used his SWR meter to tune the antenna. It was pretty hard finding the point to
solder on to get the best SWR so we had to move up and down for quite a bit. As usual, soldering iron is just not hot enough so we used the stove.

One tip I have about soldering is if the solder does not stick to the copper like it is one metal, it means that you either do not have enough heat or the copper is oxidized. Always apply solder directly to heated copper not the iron tip. This goes to any soldering work including on PCB.

Common mistake of soldering work is that people tend to put solder on the iron tip and expects the solder to stick to the copper. This won't work 100% of the time. The chemical bond just won't occur. You need to apply fresh solder to the heated area because at the core of the solder there is a cleaning agent that cleans away the oxidation to allow for the solder to bond chemically to the copper.