Amateur radio equipment reviews. Based on my direct experience or taken from other sources
Loop Antennas The Principles of the Loop Antenna article was in a newsletter of the MDXC. The next three were from a talk that Mike Bates and James Dale gave to the Northland Antique Radio Club’s Radio Workshop at the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting.
Directional Antennas An antenna is known as “directional” if its pattern strongly favors a certain direction. A directional works by concentrating the signal in one direction at the expense of other directions. It is also commonly referred to as the “Beam” antenna. I am going to start with the earliest type of beam discovered, the
Mobile Antennas This is an area of hot competition among antenna manufactures. I am not going to cover how to mount your mobile antenna (Radio Shack sells everything you need to mount antennas), but the basic mobile antenna designs that most mobile antennas manufactures are using today. If you have just started reading my page
4 Element Yagi Building This article contains discussion of all the different antenna principles previously described elsewhere on this website. A thorough reading and understanding of the other sections are necessary to comprehend all the terms used on this page. It is not necessary to understand all the terms and theories described to build
Building a 4 Element Cubical Quad There are many reasons you should considering building your own antenna. First you can taylor it to the needs of your communication (local or DX and optimize it for the frequency you talk on) and to the needs of your environment (make it strong if you live in a
Earth Ground Most of us overlook the importance of hooking good earth grounds to our antennas and our radios. Some think if lightning hits, its going to do what it wants to do. Probably right! Lightning protection is not why I am stressing the earth ground. Good earth grounds serve two purposes. One they protect
Angle of Radiation Most of us think that our antenna’s “shoot” the signal straight off the end (if its a beam), at right angles from the antenna. I have even seen some operators (mainly ones who live in valleys) bend their mast so that their antenna does not sit with the boom parallel to the ground
Co-Phasing Co-phasing or “stacking” has long been a way to get high gain from antennas. Co-phasing involves placing two (or more!) identical antennas either side-by-side or one over top another (“stacking”) at a certain distance apart (usually a 1/2 Wavelength or more) and feeding the antennas in-phase. The result is 3 db more than just
Circular Polarization Circular Polarization is a relatively untalked about subject on 11 Meters, perhaps this is the first time you have ever heard of such a thing. Most antennas are oriented to produce linear polarization – either horizontal or vertical polarization. Sometimes, a creative CBer will turn their beam at a 45 degree angle, half-way
