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June 4th 04, 11:47 PM

In article ,
(William) writes:

Steve, I didn't see the rant. Please repost it. bb

There was NO "rant." Since nursie didn't include either a link or
enough of the news article, here it is -

=================================================
URI physics employee invents new antenna technology
Media Contact: Jan Wenzel, 401-874-2116
KINGSTON, R.I. -- June 2, 2004 -- Rob Vincent, an
employee in the University of Rhode Island's Physics
Department, proves the adage that necessity is the
mother of invention.

An amateur radio operator since he was 14, Vincent has
always lived in houses situated on small lots. Because
he couldn't erect a large antenna on a confined
property, he has been continually challenged over the
years to find a way to get better reception.

"I was always tinkering in the basement. Thank
goodness, my parents were tolerant. I can still
remember my poor father driving up our driveway after
a hard day's work to see wires wrapped around the
house," Vincent recalls.

"The Holy Grail of antenna technology is to create a
small antenna with high efficiency and wide
bandwidth," explains Vincent. "According to current
theory, you have to give up one of the three - size,
efficiency, or bandwidth - to achieve the other two."

After decades of experimentation, combined with a
30-year engineering career and Yankee ingenuity,
Vincent has invented a revolutionary antenna
technology. The distributed- load, monopole
antennas are smaller, produce high efficiency, and
retain good to excellent bandwidth. And they have
multiple applications.

With this technology it will be possible to double, at
minimum, the range of walkie-talkies used by police,
fire, and other municipal personnel. Naval ships, baby
monitors, and portable antennas for military use are
other applications. An antenna could be mounted on a
chip in a cell phone and be applied to wireless local
area networks. Another application deals with radio
frequency identification, which is expected someday to
replace the barcode system.

"It could even make the Dick Tracy wrist radio with
all the features, such as Internet access, a
possibility," Vincent says.

The inventor pursued his quest to build a better
antenna in earnest eight years ago when he and his
significant other moved into a house situated on a
50-foot by 100-foot lot in Warwick. There was nothing
on the commercial market that could fit the lot that
would provide the performance Vincent needed to be
heard in distant lands and that would be acceptable to
his neighbors. All the small antennas being sold were
inefficient and lacked bandwidth, which resulted in
low performance and high frustration.

Vincent looked at the techniques that were currently
used to reduce antenna size and realized something was
missing in the way everyone was approaching the
problem.

He began to model various combinations into a computer
program called MathCad. His first attempt produced a
21 MHz band antenna that was 18 inches high. Normally,
antennas for this band are 12 to 24 feet high.

Vincent installed the antenna in his back yard. The
legal limit that amateurs can operate is 1,000 watts
with the norm being 100 watts.
The amateur radio operator experimented with 5 to 10
watts. He reached a station in Chile and made contacts
in various European countries. Meanwhile he kept
adding power until it reached 100 watts. That's when
things suddenly went bad. Walking outside in the
backyard, he understood why. The antenna had melted.

After examining the molten matter, Vincent wasn't
discouraged. This was only a small model and not
designed to handle much power. The part of the antenna
that failed proved to be the key to the design. After
analyzing the failure, Vincent realized that he was
able to transform a lot of current along the antenna
with even relatively low power.

"Antennas radiate by setting up large amounts of
current flow through various parts of their
structure," he says. "The larger the current the more
radiation and the better the output of the antenna."

Vincent went back to the drawing board and continued
to improve the technology. Relying on his nearly 30
years at Raytheon Co. and at KVH Industries in
Middletown R.I., which provided him with a
diversified background in electronics and electronic
systems, Vincent overcame a myriad of problems and
succeeded.

He established three test sites for various
prototypes. Antennas were placed in Westport, Mass. in
a salt marsh, the best ground for transmission and
reception. Another set of antennas was placed on rocky
ground in Cumberland, R.I., the worst kind of site,
and at a Warwick site which is in between the two in
terms of grounding. The antennas, which resemble
flagpoles, worked well at all locations.

Tests confirmed that Vincent has created antennas at
one third to one ninth of their full size
counterparts. Normally smaller antennas are only 8 to
15 percent efficient. Vincent's antennas achieved 80
to 100 percent efficiency as compared to the larger
antennas.

A patent is pending on Vincent's technology. The
inventor has made the University of Rhode Island and
its Physics Department partners that will benefit from
any revenue his invention earns. "The University and
its Physics Department has been very supportive and
given me time and space to work on this project," says
Vincent who was recently presented the 2004
Outstanding Intellectual Property Award by URI's
Research Office. "I couldn't have done this without
the University's support. It's only fair that it share
in the profits."

Copyright © 2002 University of Rhode Island
(Disclaimer)
===============================================

Firstly, the "article" was published by the University of Rhode
Island and all such things from all organizations and schools are
in the "self-love" category or better known as PR/Public Relations.

Secondly, Rob Vincent is a PRO with 30+ years working for a
salary and has access to MathCad tools (any of the NEC programs
could have done it...such as Roy Lewallen's EZNEC).

Thirdly, small antennas aren't new...they've been used for a half
century and more. The USMC-contract T-195 (via Collins) had a
built-in HF antenna tuner to work with any vehicular whip. The
AN/PRC-104, a manpack HF transceiver (Hughes Ground Sys.
Div., early 1980s) has an automatic antenna tuner built-in for the
single manpacked whip antenna. SGC has been building and
selling HF antenna tuners for many and various radio services,
ham included. The Navy Postgraduate School has some slightly
old double-whip antenna designs on the web (PDFs) intended for
shipboard use on HF.

Fourth, one has to note who made everyone notice this piece,
as well as the lack of link or other references other than having to
go to the University of Rhode Island site and go down two levels
to get it. Nursie's qualifications as an antenna "expert" are in
question since he went gung-ho on the "ham" part and seriously
neglected the other facts of the invention.

Fifth, the URI must have funded the application for the patent since
a patent search (required by patent office to show any prior art) is
going to cost somewhere between $4K and $6K nowadays. [why
would Vincent set up some experimental antenna on a salt marsh
plus two ohter places unless it was for some URI project?] That
little squib has "PR" written all over it. Might work, though, but
lots and lots of folks be working on small antennas trying to get the
golden "100% efficiency" qualification.

Jim Hampton was right. Newsgroups ARE getting sillier and
sillier, with such gems as "MARS is amateur radio." :-)