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My first antenna "design"
I had an idea that seems to work.
I like inherently DC-shorted antennas because of an experience I had about 30 years ago with thunderstorms. Using a home-brew quarter-wave vertical on 2 meters, my receiver got completely blocked for about 10 seconds by a lightning stroke a few miles from my location. I was terrified that I had lost the front end of the IC-2AT. Fortunately, I did not, but that experience apparently imprinted on my so-called brain. I know that I could add a shunt inductor across the terminals to prevent this, but I prefer a natural or inherent solution. The folded vertical unipole is inherently "grounded". (I use quotes here because what I really mean is that the antenna input is DC-connected to the common.) So, I like that antenna. However, its terminal impedance is about 4 times that of a simple ground plane. Well, I noticed that the terminal impedance of a simple quarter-wave unipole was about 30 or so ohms until the radials are sloped downward at about 45 degrees which raises the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms. In my case, I needed to lower the terminal impedance (about 120 to 140 ohms) of the folded antenna. Well, what if I sloped the radials *upward* approximately 45 degrees to lower the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms? It worked, and EZNEC says that the radiation pattern is pretty much like the usual ground plane vertical. I just thought I would share this info with the group. I also have a configuration for a full-wave loop (inherently at DC common) on 70 cm that has an infinite balun thanks to Walter Maxwell's book Reflections II, page 22-10. How I manage to get the terminal impedance to 50 ohms is interesting, but I will save that for another post. Cheers, John KD5YI |
#2
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My first antenna "design"
On Feb 2, 5:48*pm, John - KD5YI wrote:
I had an idea that seems to work. I like inherently DC-shorted antennas because of an experience I had about 30 years ago with thunderstorms. Using a home-brew quarter-wave vertical on 2 meters, my receiver got completely blocked for about 10 seconds by a lightning stroke a few miles from my location. I was terrified that I had lost the front end of the IC-2AT. Fortunately, I did not, but that experience apparently imprinted on my so-called brain. I know that I could add a shunt inductor across the terminals to prevent this, but I prefer a natural or inherent solution. The folded vertical unipole is inherently "grounded". (I use quotes here because what I really mean is that the antenna input is DC-connected to the common.) So, I like that antenna. However, its terminal impedance is about 4 times that of a simple ground plane. Well, I noticed that the terminal impedance of a simple quarter-wave unipole was about 30 or so ohms until the radials are sloped downward at about 45 degrees which raises the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms. In my case, I needed to lower the terminal impedance (about 120 to 140 ohms) of the folded antenna. Well, what if I sloped the radials *upward* approximately 45 degrees to lower the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms? It worked, and EZNEC says that the radiation pattern is pretty much like the usual ground plane vertical. I just thought I would share this info with the group. I also have a configuration for a full-wave loop (inherently at DC common) on 70 cm that has an infinite balun thanks to Walter Maxwell's book Reflections II, page 22-10. How I manage to get the terminal impedance to 50 ohms is interesting, but I will save that for another post. Cheers, John KD5YI Interesting design, as it is shorter than a standard ground plane vertical. Have you built and tested one? Wayne W5GIE |
#3
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My first antenna "design"
On 2/6/2011 10:32 AM, Wayne wrote:
On Feb 2, 5:48 pm, John - wrote: I had an idea that seems to work. I like inherently DC-shorted antennas because of an experience I had about 30 years ago with thunderstorms. Using a home-brew quarter-wave vertical on 2 meters, my receiver got completely blocked for about 10 seconds by a lightning stroke a few miles from my location. I was terrified that I had lost the front end of the IC-2AT. Fortunately, I did not, but that experience apparently imprinted on my so-called brain. I know that I could add a shunt inductor across the terminals to prevent this, but I prefer a natural or inherent solution. The folded vertical unipole is inherently "grounded". (I use quotes here because what I really mean is that the antenna input is DC-connected to the common.) So, I like that antenna. However, its terminal impedance is about 4 times that of a simple ground plane. Well, I noticed that the terminal impedance of a simple quarter-wave unipole was about 30 or so ohms until the radials are sloped downward at about 45 degrees which raises the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms. In my case, I needed to lower the terminal impedance (about 120 to 140 ohms) of the folded antenna. Well, what if I sloped the radials *upward* approximately 45 degrees to lower the terminal impedance to about 50 ohms? It worked, and EZNEC says that the radiation pattern is pretty much like the usual ground plane vertical. I just thought I would share this info with the group. I also have a configuration for a full-wave loop (inherently at DC common) on 70 cm that has an infinite balun thanks to Walter Maxwell's book Reflections II, page 22-10. How I manage to get the terminal impedance to 50 ohms is interesting, but I will save that for another post. Cheers, John KD5YI Interesting design, as it is shorter than a standard ground plane vertical. Have you built and tested one? Wayne W5GIE Yes, I have. The one I constructed was for the 70 cm band. I have misplaced the frequency/impedance data I took, but I remember that it compared closely with EZNEC. I did not try to measure the pattern, but I did not notice any dead spots when receiving. The only thing I don't like is that it is more time-consuming to tune because you can't just chop off the end like you can with the unfolded one. John KD5YI |
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