Simple Ham Radio Antennas

Nice, easy to understand tutorial on Full-Wave Loops antennas from Stan Gibilisco (W1GV). I've used full-wave loop antennas for many years and have found them to be simple, effective, and efficient. Full 80-10 meter coverage can be gained if you design your full-wave loop for 80 meters and use 450 ohm ladder line as your feed line . The ladder line then goes into a balanced tuner , which is connected to your rig by a short length of coaxial cable . If you don't have a balanced tuner, you can connect the ladder line to a 4:1 balun and use a short piece of coaxial cable to connect the balun to your tuner. You can use a variety of shapes for your full-wave loop, with the square and delta loop being popular options. For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds are updated daily. You can follow our blog community with a free email subscription or by tapping into the blog RSS feed . Aloha es 73 de Russ (KH6JRM). ...

QRZ Seeking Experienced Web Programmer : " QRZ Seeking Experienced Web Programmer QRZ is looking for a skilled, experienced web programmer to join our team and become a part of ham radio history. QRZ is an internet-based virtual company and so this is an opportunity for a work-at-home position. It doesn't matter where you live so long as you have a great internet connection and can interact with other team members who are on the Mountain Standard Time schedule. This is a salaried, full time position that offers competitive pay, benefits, vacation as well as sick leave. You are free to move about the country and connect in from exotic places while you work. Like I said, it doesn't matter where you are located, or even if you're mobile, so long as you are able to login, work, make deadlines, and have frequent interaction with the rest of the team on Skype . QRZ's technical infrastructure is cloud-based using industry standard LAMP practices. You'll need expe...

A nice weekend construction project from Dave Tadlock (KD0ZZ).The 10 meter band is one of my favorite hangouts. You never know when propagation will smile on you and reward you with a nice DX contact. Although Dave's antenna is not a "ground plane" antenna in the purist sense (a ground plane is always elevated to decouple the radials from the actual ground and, thereby, reduce ground loses), the antenna is well designed and will give you many hours of fun on a band which exhibits both HF and VHF characteristics. You could also modify a standard CB (11 meter) stainless steel whip (102 inches/259.08 cm), add four elevated radials, and raise the bottom of the whip to a height of 16 to 20-feet/4.87-6.09 meters above ground level. Good results can be obtained with Dave's or my somewhat cruder project. The idea is to build your own antenna and experiment. Have fun! For the latest Amateur Radio news and events, please check out the blog sidebars. These news feeds a...

Let's Do Ground Planes Again : "Let's Do Ground Planes Again from Alan Applegate, K0BG on January 24, 2015." Editor's Note : Due to the popularity of some of eHam's older articles, many of which you may not have read, the eHam.net team has decided to rerun some of the best articles that we have received since eHam's inception. These articles will be reprinted to add to the quality of eHam's content and in a show of appreciation to the authors of these articles." This article was originally published on: 07/02/2007 Let's Do Ground Planes Again The Spanish language has a whole bunch of words which mean hot, while English gropes around with about two or three. Spanish gets a little fuzzier with the word Ground, but not nearly as much as English. We have the ground we walk on, hollowed ground, DC grounds, AC grounds, RF grounds, and grounds for divorce! We also have polo grounds , capital grounds, football grounds, common grounds, pro...

Many antennas, multiple benefits : " Many antennas , multiple benefits", Jan 21, 2015 By combining large distributions of compact antenna nodes with fast fiber optic communication, researchers have developed a new wireless infrastructure ready for intense future demands. Credit: A* A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research A concept that balances large-scale installations of low-cost and low-power antennas to boost cellular coverage in difficult environments will also provide better connectivity to more users. Developed by A*STAR, this new architecture for wireless communications can help service providers meet growing demands for increased network capacity and improved energy efficiency. Jingon Joung, Yeow Chia and Sumei Sun from the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore sought to combine two state-of-the-art wireless technologies into a novel type of antenna system. The first technology, known as large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (L- MIMO ), use...

A fun and not necessarily "scientific" demonstration on how larger diameter radiating elements of an antenna will provide wider bandwidth coverage. To keep weight and structure support under control, Larry (WD0AKX) chose the 2-meter band for his fascinating experiment. Using a frequency of 147.861 MHz as the design frequency, Larry makes antenna elements ranging from 1/16-inch to 3-inches in diameter to test his theory. His rudimentary tests confirm that larger diameter antenna elements do widen the bandwidth a bit on 2-meters. The same principle applies to HF operation, where classic "cage" dipoles, folded dipoles made from 300-ohm tv ribbon line, and fan dipoles often are used to broaden bandwidth. Overall, the video is well done and shows how simple antennas can be improved with just a few simple tools and instruments. If the video doesn't cue up immediately, direct your browser to: http://youtu.be/sLHOIG7O7w. You can also enter the title directly to ge...

Free online magazine Antentop 01- 2014 is ready. : " Free online magazine Antentop 01- 2014 is ready. Hi. Free online magazine Antentop 01- 2014 is ready. It contains 41+ topics, including: Antenna Theory : Linear Array Theory- Part II; HF - Antenna Practice: 44 Feet Dipole. Where is theTruth?: Lawn Antenna: Buried Antennas for  Emergency Communications: Simple Broadband Antenna for the 40- meter Band : Directional Antenna UA6AGWV. 7.00: Antenna UA6AGW in Experimenters byRU1OZ : Antenna UA6AGW V.40.20:Field Antenna UA6AGW V.40.21: Shortened Antenna G5RV for 14- 50- MHz Bands: Shortened Dipole Balcony Antenna for the 20- meter Band : Simple Window Loop Antenna : Simple Folded Dipole Antenna for the 20- meter Band: Simple Wire Antenna for All HF- Bands: Twin Triangle Antenna for the 10- meter Band: Compact Twin Delta Antenna for the 80- and 40- meter Bands: Delta Antenna for 80-. 40-, 20- and 15- meter Bands:Windom UA6CA for 80-, 40-, 20- and 10- meter Bands: Air Plane HF ...