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Jon Kåre Hellan · September 11th 08, 08:53 AM posted to rec.radio.amateur.antenna

writes:

Roy Lewallen wrote:
wrote:

Of course.

Everyone knows the gain of a parabola is directly proportional to
the size in wavelengths, or:

G=10*log k(pi*D/L)^2

Where G= gain in DB over an isotropic, k ~ .55 for most real parabolas,
D is the diameter, and L is the wavelength (wavelength and diameter
in the same units.

So a 2,000 foot parabola on 20m would have just about 58db gain.

Hm. I get 47.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Hmm, when I use 14 Mhz and 6 decimal places I get 37; must have fat
fingered it the first time.

Going a different way, I also get about 37.

Aperture of a dish is the area, pi*r^2. r is about 14.2 wl, so area
is about 635 sq. wl.

Aperture of a dipole is 1/4 * 1/2 wl = 1/8 sq. wl.

That makes gain 635/(1/8) = 635*8, i.e about 5100 or just over 37
dBd. This assumes 100 % illumination of the dish, which we won't
achieve. So make it 35 dBd or so, i.e. 37 dBi. Using the o.p.'s
formula, I get 36.5 dBi.

It's odd that pi is squared in the formula. The squared part must be
to account for the area of the dish, which is pi*r^2. Obviously, this
can has been compensated for by the choice of 'k'.