About SAL Electronics Products
SAL Electronic’ is committed to the design and the production of HF wire antennas and VHF/UHF fixed station antennas for the Amateur Radio market. Our products span the short-wave market as well as the amateur radio market. The main goal of SAL Electronic antennas is to provide a single antenna system that will provide the widest possible bandwidth available with the highest mechanical standards possible. The current HF wire antennas offer wideband end fed or Off-Center-Fed antenna designs that provide a wide frequency agile system in a single stealth, low noise wire design.
Our premier antenna is the 80 Meter OCF antenna that has been designed to provide operation for the 80 thru 6 Meter Ham Bands with minimal tuner inter-action for full legal power with minimal tuner inter-action. No tuner is required for the entire 40, 20, 17, 12, and 10 Meter bands. No tuner is required for the 50 to 51 MHz portion of the 6 Meter band as well. This is accomplished with the optimum 135 feet antenna design, which can be installed as a classic straight-line form, in addition to an inverted V, or a sloping Inverted V.
For installations where a dipole or OCF dipole does not fit, SAL Electronics offers several models of an End Fed design. Two mid-power models are available in either 90 feet or 43 feet lengths providing 160 to 6 Meters, or 80 to 10 Meters operation respect-fully. For portable operations or attic installations there is a 45 Watt low-power model available. All end fed antennas require the use of an wideband antenna tuner.
Features common to all SAL Electronics’ HF wire antennas are hand wound ferrite core transformers, a weatherproof enclosure, all stainless steel hardware, silver plated connectors, and insulated 14 gauge stranded copper wire. Why insulated wire? The insulation provides a hard-to-see jacket to minimize visual impact, prevents the wire from oxidizing to maintain optimum skin effect, and allows installation through vegetation such as trees and bushes without any adverse effects. A final note is the wire element’s attachment to the transformer and insulators. The design places all the mechanical stress on the insulator and the transformer eye-bolts. There is no stress placed in the electrical connection at the matching transformer. This design also provides the ability to remove or replace the element(s) for maintenance, or field adjustment purposes.
SAL Electronics’ offers VHF and UHF ground plane antennas built with aircraft quality aluminum materials. Our ground planes are hand machined of 6061-T6 aluminum plate for the base, and 6061-T832 hard drawn 0.058 wall aluminum tubing. Tubing elements are capped with fiberglass at the attachment ends to provide waterproofing and strong mechanical attachment. The far end of the tubing elements are capped with a vinyl foot to prevent water ingress, and to provide a soft mare free footing if used indoors on furniture for temporary installations. All electrical hardware is stainless steel, and the mounting hardware is 3/8” zinc plated steel.
All products are tested for VSWR performance using an AIM UHF antenna analyzer over and beyond the intended frequency range of operation.
SAL Electronics is designing other wide band VHF and UHF antenna systems for future deploy-ment. Future designs include Moxon beams, and wideband halo antennas for 2, 6, and 10 Meters.
SAL Electronics is located in the far Northwest Chicago suburb of Algonquin, Illinois, and can be reached at msalak@sal-electonics.com, or at 1-815-669-6567. I can also be reached at kc9q@arrl.net.
73,
Michael Salak
SAL Electronics