On Sep 29, 11:46*pm, "John Gilmer" wrote:
Hi:

A month or so ago I say a PBS piece on fractals. * The piece claimed that
the "technology" is used to make the antennas for cell phones.

Have any amateurs used "fractal technology" to form their antennas?

Also, I note that "they" market HDTV antennas that are about the size of a
book. * Do these things work? *What's inside them?

Yours,

JLG

I consider any balanced symmetrical antenna a fractal.
Even a dipole.
What many consider as a fractal antenna, I consider a linear
loaded antenna using "creative" linear loading.
Is creative linear loading superior to the usual linear loading
one might encounter? No one has ever proven this to be the
case.

They even held contests on this group to see who could
build the best "fractal" antenna. It was shown that even
random designs performed just as well or better than
the designs offered by the local fractal guru at that time.

Fractal antennas are a viable antenna to use in tight
spaces, but no one has ever proven that a fractal design
is any better than a random linear loading design.
Not even once that I can think of.

I could cover my eyeballs, and scribble out a symmetrical
design on a piece of paper, and most likely it would
perform just as well as a "guru" offered fractal design.
A few here have proven this to be the case.
What fractal antennas are really good for is when you
have DOD and government contracts that require very
small antennas, and need something which seems
"special" in order to win these contracts.
It doesn't really matter if the antennas are superior to
random design linear loading. All that matters is that
the ones that sign checks believe it to be the case.
Kind of like the government spending $342.95 for a
hammer. It doesn't matter that the expensive hammer
is no better than one you can buy at Home Depot for
a fraction of that price. The hype overrules the reality,
and clouds the minds of those that sign checks.
Needless to say, the ones that sign checks don't have
a clue whether fractal antennas are worth the money or
not. They could care less. They see it as redistributing
wealth. :/
To me it matters not. I use manly full sized antennas,
and I'll leave the little fractals to ones that want inferior
performance.
Heck, if I could sell boatloads of inferior antennas for
boatloads of money, I could probably live with inferior
antennas too. :/
I'd be laughing too hard on my way to the bank to
worry about having a decent antenna for my radios.
Or HDTV.. Another groaner for me. HDTV antennas..
What in the wide wide world of sports is an HDTV
antenna? Do digital signals follow different rules than
analog signals? Groan... Just another example of
getting people to write checks for something someone
claims as "special" when it's not.