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Using a small satellite dish as an 11 meter antenna

AudioShockwav said:
I played around with Magnetic loop antennas for a little while, and for a very small antenna, i was impressed by the result.
I used 3/8 copper tubing formed into a loop, and tuned with a small variable cap.

The best thing i found about it was low noise, it was not a dx monster, but it worked quite well.

I made contacts into the upper Midwest from Ca, with the loop sitting on a table on my patio, running 100 watts.
If you like to play/home brew stuff, it is a real fun design to play with.
And it is a hardware store project.
Here are some Resources

http://www.elecraft.com/TechNotes/loop_ant/wd8puoloop.pdf

AA5TB - Small Loop Antennas.

My Magnetic Loop Antenna - KR1ST

http://www.laud.no/la6nca/loop/index.htm

73
Jeff
Click to expand...

How was the match?
 
How was the match?
Click to expand...
It is tunable, when building it you need a small variable cap that is used to tune the antenna to what ever frequency you are using.
Once the antenna is built, hook it to your radio, dial up on the band that you built it for, listen to the RX and tune the Cap for the most noise...I was surprised, that point also was very close to a point where SWR was usually less than 2:1
Go to the Page where Alex has his antennas and one of the videos shows him deploying his loop, and how to tune it.
It was a project i played with for several weeks, then moved on to making a Balun and loading up a downspout and a rain gutter for HF work....
It is a terrible thing to have ADD....hard to stay focused on one project ;)

73
Jeff
 
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The Up side to that Homer is you get to cram more projects into the day......the real hard part is getting them finished LOL

Did you have a look at the links to the loop antenna I had posted?
It was a fun project to play with.
I thought that WD8PUO had a nice home brew loop going with the sliding "Piston type" match, another way to tune the antenna, and they work well for the size, here is a quote from KR1ST`s website:

I'm a QRP operator and never use more than 5 Watts (SSB). With the antenna in the living room and at this power level I've been able to work Europe, Asiatic Russia, the Caribbean, South America, North America, and West Africa. I have been able to work over 80 countries with only 5 Watt SSB and this antenna.
Click to expand...
They make fun portable antennas for rigs like the Yaesu FT 817, FT 857/897 or the New Elecraft KX3.

73
Jeff
 
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AudioShockwav said:
The Up side to that Homer is you get to cram more projects into the day......the real hard part is getting them finished LOL

Did you have a look at the links to the loop antenna I had posted?
It was a fun project to play with.
I thought that WD8PUO had a nice home brew loop going with the sliding "Piston type" match, another way to tune the antenna, and they work well for the size, here is a quote from KR1ST`s website:

They make fun portable antennas for rigs like the Yaesu FT 817, FT 857/897 or the New Elecraft KX3.

73
Jeff
Click to expand...

Your certainly right Audio, this weekend i thought i would work on two antennas, a 2 meter ground plane and an eleven meter as well as get my trailer ready to go and pick up a tower i am buying used...well i spent most of the weekend working on a leaky faucet ( i thought was just a gasket) but turned out to be one complete replacement of valve and line portion. rust and calcium deposits suck!

Someday i would like to try one of those loop antennas for fun.
 
C2 said:
I had a 10-foot C-band dish on 23 cm that worked GREAT! Close to 30 dB gain.

The diameter of a dish needs to be multiples of the wavelength for which it is used.
Click to expand...

My Old summer home...
We had a 30 foot concrete C band dish.

Bet that would have made a killer 1.2 and especially for WiFi antenna
 
I miss the old C band days. There was always something cool to watch. Live, unedited news feeds were awesome. Lack of commercials, even better.

They had to go an ruin it.
 
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I remember them as well. In the early 1990's i built a new home in an area not served by cable and DTH satellite was not yet available as it is today. I had two channels that were snowy and one crystal clear off air and that was it. One day while at work I received a call from Broadcast News in Toronto telling me they were switching out hardware and a crew would be down sometime in the next couple weeks to change out all the satellite news equipment we had and that the old gear was being made available to anyone on-site that wanted it. I jumped on it quick and ended up with a 6 1/2 foot Ku band dish with a dual feed C-band LNB for V and H polarity as well as a switchable dual polarity Ku band LNB and a dual C/Ku band Pansat receiver. I had a lot of fun withj that for a few years until cable came out the road and then dropped that for DTH satellite. Most of the time I parked the dish on Galaxy 4 ( or was it Galaxy 5?) I had to manually move the dish but I made a chart and mounted a pointer on the dish mount. I knew that the yellow dot and 16 inches of screw thread was Anik E1 and the blue dot and 7 inches of screw thread was Galaxy 5 etc. I could go out and swing the dish and measure the amount of screw thread on the elevation control and come back in and have a crystal clear picture. It worked great.
 
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Not to start up an old topic... seeing there was never any pictures... But if the antenna was horizontal, with the tip pointing to the north, wouldnt this talk east and west? He was probably getting his rejection from the fact it was mounted horizontal. Not because of the dish. Thats the take I took on it. I think this is the Null area many were talking about. Which would be directly in front of it, which is the actually direction he was intending to talk. Not to mention Id have to be proven the swr could actually get that low on such a contraption... And did I mention I seen guys talking off coke cans with a tuner... Worked, for like 1/2 mile of open field... NOT 200 miles.
I've built some crazy antennas, but are based on good theory, but nothing like this... I spend a LOT of time building, trying, tuning, and making new antenna. Love it! Yet I dont think I would have ever considered this one. :headbang
 

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