Came across this stash the other day, nicely piled up to be scrapped, unfortunately. Was told: grab what you want before it goes .. 😳🤷🏼‍♂️🤯

RF absorber pyramidal panels like these are expensive and really hard to get at as a private person, so it felt like I struck gold 😃

I filled my little car and tomorrow I’ll be back for more: hear-say travels fast in the RF engineering community and as these are located within a secured area with strict access control, I was asked to bring some of it outside the fence 😂

#rfengineering #antennaengineer #antennadesign #hamradio #hamr #antennameasurement

Suddenly it occurred to me to question the thickness of wire in a balun, and this led me to question the thickness of wire for antenna elements.

This, my dudes and dudettes, is how you ride a seguey 😜

Doing a little extrapolation from some questions on the general class exam, I suspected bigger wire would be better (more surface area), and some research confirms that, at least to a point, this is true.

Consequently, I think I'm going to go back up in the damn attic, and fairly soon, and replace my 24ga stranded wire dipole elements with some made of 18ga stranded wire, and see if I can't get that SWR down a few points.

#amateurRadio #hamRadio #antennaDesign #antennaTuning

oK, going back into the attic, I rearranged some things.

First, I'd taken up more like 18" from each end of the dipole, so I relaxed that back to about 8". This gives me an SWR of a steady 2.2 on that antenna.

I reversed the vertical orientation of the end fed antenna, such that the end is now pointing at the ground, instead of the feed. This changed the SWR on that antenna to a quite satisfactory and very steady 1.7.

This doesn't just give me options, but lets me monitor with the rasppi/hackRF rig an work with the uSDRX+

Looks like it's almost time for 10m to start heating up around these parts 😜 💢

#amateurRadio #hamRadio #antennaDesign

In the continuing saga of my 10m tuned dipole:

I've removed the old video cable antenna almost entirely; all that remains is to pull the bundle down through the ceiling and pitch it in the trash; and I've shortened the dipole by pinning back about six inches from each end. This puts my SWR at about 2.2 (yuck).

Maybe that sucker needs to be slightly longer overall than 13.5 ft.

#amateurRadio #hamRadio #antennaDesign

So I just downloaded and installed the latest (2022) revision of something called #xnec2c

This is the evolution of the #ARRL Antenna Design/Simulation/Optimization software. The original was in fortran; this revision is in C and runs well with X on a linux desktop.

What a frigging mess, from an interface perspective. The documentation could use a bit of work as well.

Not to be terribly critical, just making this observation as a first impression.

This piece of work may have a long and storied history, and it may be taking on the patina of age; but one sure way to let your technology slide off into obscurity is to put your tools on a shelf and worship them instead of using and improving them over time.

Lets do a python version, with a proper modern UX, some help that does more than simply describe the software, but rather works as a living reference with a few simple wizards for the novice.

#amatuerRadio #radio #hamRadio #antennaDesign

In playing around in the radio world, i made a few antennas yesterday. Most were 2 meter (146 MHz centered), including a copper cactus j-pole, a ladder wire j-pole, a quarter wave ground plane, and a bnc block dipole. I also made one 70cm dipole. Now, just to tune them... #arrl #hamradio #ardc #antenna #antennadesign #maker #makingma

Brushing up on my #HFSS #antennadesign skills. Anyone know of any good tutorial videos, or challenges/projects? Thanks!

This is a naive / beginner question, but what are folks' favorite source crimp-on coax connectors, and general connectors / adapters for coax (RG-6, RG58, etc...)? Does brand matter? Right now I've just been picking stuff up at the local home depot & Lowes but I imagine there's better quality out there. #HamRadio #Coax #AntennaDesign #RG6 #RG58

#TowerTuesday #hamradio #amateurradio #cbradio #27mc #SWL #DX #hamr

RT @InnovAntennas@twitter.com

Massive new InnovAntennas low noise X-pol LFA Yagi system for 50MHz @ OH2BC. 10m booms and 21m+ wide Cross boom #antenna #antennas #antennadesign #hamradio #50mhz