Barely Works Technology
Antennas Overview Page

Here is a hand-drawn diagram of the basic antenna plan:



Comments:

"Up" is about 60 true.
The yagis are not to scale, they are optimistically small.  All shown might not actually fit there.
The intent is to use
  - whatever works and fits up to 10 meters, no planned changes
  - yagis from 6 m. to 70 cm., see "don't exist yet" below.
  - feeds on a 3 m. class dish, lower left, above that

The ones that exist today are
  - 2M12 on the right mast, azimuth only, horizontal 6 m. high
  - Diamond discone center left, 7 m. high
  - 15/17/20 dipoles, above house, about 8 m. above ground
    - use on 30 and 12 with tuner
  -  6/10 dipoles, barely above house 6 m. above ground
    - doesn't work well, currently connected to the Bose for KPCC 89.3
  - Voyager DX-IV at lower right, base a meter or so downhill from house grade
    - 160 m works!
    - 80 m good
    - 60 m works with tuner, poor
    - 40 m excellent
    - 20 m poor
    - 2 m, takes power, but, are you kidding?

The ones that are planned, roughly in order of planning, are
  - MT-1000 to make the 2M12 AzEl
    - When AzEl is in place, re-measure the horizon mask or come up with a non-real-time way to automate it from satellite AOS/LOS data.
  - heavier duty TBD Az rotator
  - move the TV antenna and existing Channel Master to a new center mast, dedicated
  - on the other side of a TBD non-conducting horizontal mast
  - two or four stacked 440-18, so I can learn about stacking and have a little compensating gain
  - homebrew a 3 meter dish and use another MT-1000 and TBD Az rotator (see picture below)
    - might also looking into getting a surplus dish of that size
  - L-Band feed as part of the L-Band project
  - higher frequency feeds as part of their projects
  - consider a 6M3 or 6M5X on that center mast (with TV antenna) for meteor work

Another planning document



Additional Comments

- Shows a possible AzEl method for dish
- log periodic feed on the bottom is unlikely
  - unneeded if I have interchangeable feeds, "Bird Wattmeter" model is fine
  - can't have every frequency at focus
  - circular polarization problematic, but, speaking of that
- circular polarization and switchability are not on the short list, will be avoided if possible

- A reference for low cost horns and corner reflectors is QST 2003 March p. 57.
- An article about an Excel front end for EZNEC.  QEX 2003 March/April p. 32.
- AMSAT FD pictures which might scale to this.  AMSAT Journal 2003 Sep/Oct p. 17.
- Buying Your Neighbor's Surplus 10 foot dish and using it.  QST 2003 July p. 28 and cover.
- Good antenna ideas QST 2003 July p. 76.
- A copper 2 meter halo.  QST 2002 December, p. 46.

- Affordable Az/El Positioner, QST 2003 June, p. 28.
- 40 foot telescoping pole, QST 2004 April, p. 64.
- 6 meter Moxon, QST 2004 April, p. 65.  QST 2004 March, p. 55.
- Short beam for 6, QST 2007 August, p. 41.
- Jannson on the 1.2 meter version of the 3.0 meter dish I'm looking at, including dual feed, QST 2004 March, p. 38.
- Transmission lines > 5 GHz, QST 2006 January, p. 94.
- Stacking overview, QST 2008 January, p. 82.

last updated 2008 January 2 cbd