Peter O. Brackett wrote:

In 14 June EE Times on page 55 we find an article on a new concept in
"miniaturized" antennas following are a few titilating quotes which I have
excerpted from the article. The article may be available from the EE Times
WWW site: http://www.eet.com.

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"University researcher calls distributed load monopole a radical take on old
ideas"

"A four year skunk works effort at the University of Rhode Island in
Kingston has cut the size of an antenna by as much as one third for any
frequency from the kHz to the GHz range" Using conventional components..."

Okay, the antenna is 66 percent of *some* antenna.....


"I've been able to put a combination of them [old ideas] together to create
a revolutionary way of building antennas. It uses basically a helix plus a
load coil"

That really isn't terribly revolutionary, is it?


"a completely planar design is less than a third the size of today's cell
phone antennas"

So now it's 33 percent of the size? And are all these antennas a third
of the size of todays cell phone antennas?

My point is this is criminally inaccurate writing. Does the good doctor
know that people are writing so poorly about his good work?


"And those 300 fiot tall antennas for the 900 kHz AM band that dominate the
skylines would only have to be 80 feet high"

Which is that... 66 percent, or 33 percent?

"When looking at these antennas, you pretty much have to forget everything
you ever knew about antennas and keep an open mind, because some of the
things I have done are vey radical"

Is this like esp or bending spoones, where if you don't keep an open
mind, it won't work?

If the antenna works, it will work whether we have an oen mind or not.


"I reduce the inductive loading that is normally required to resonate the
antenna by as much as 75%... by utilizing the distibuted capacitance around
the antenna"

A BCB version of this antenna must be something to behold!

"it's a two dimensional helix"

Then it taint an 'elix!


"the current at the top of the antenna is 80% of the current at the base"

"Vincent said no existing modeling software could adequately model his
antenna design. So he rolled his own simulation with Mathcad"

Why? All we have to do is keep an open mind!


"Eight years ago antenna design was 90% black magic and 10% theory, said
Vincent. But now with my design they are 10% black magic and 90% theory"



My final comment about this whole thing is that the whole thing is very
vague, contains a few fundamental contradictions, is written terribly,
and has some first class errors in it.

I'm becoming quite skeptical that this is even a legit website from
URI. Last week it was a technician that was getting the patent, now it
is someone else.



- Mike KB3EIA -