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Reccomend an antenna building book.
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by XYZ234 on February 1, 2006
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Hi there, I'm interested in building a few basic antennas for VHF and UHF. Can anyone reccomend a good book for a beginner ? I know there's alot on the internet but I would like to get a good book. Thanks.
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RE: Reccomend an antenna building book.
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by N3NYC on February 1, 2006
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Also, keep an eye out for back issues of CQ-VHF magazine. Since the summer of 1998, it's carried articles about VHF and UHF antennas, usually cheap and easy-to-build yagis.
Another book to check out is one touted a few months ago here on eHam, "Radio Antenna Engineering", by Edmund Laport, available free as a PDF download at <http://books.lulu.com/content/159004>. Yes, it's about MF and HF antennas, but some of the ideas could be scaled for VHF and UHF, and the section on transmission lines is *priceless*.
73,
N3NYC/Hale
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RE: Reccomend an antenna building book.
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by N3BIF on February 1, 2006
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look on ebay for an arrl antenna handbook, virtually any edition, usually available for less then 10 shipped.
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RE: Reccomend an antenna building book.
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by WA9SVD on February 1, 2006
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The ARRL Antenna Book is a good general resource for antennas, including VHF/UHF. The ARRL also has a (relatively) new book (@2003) entitled "ARRL's VHF/UHF Antenna Classics." It a collection of antenna projects from QST between 1980 and 2003; (if you or your local library has access to QST from that time span, you can probably skip that one, though.) The "RSGB VHF UHF Manual" is also a good resource for antenna projects.
You can order any of these direct from ARRL. (But you might be able to get a better price from a local bookseller or Amazon.com, and perhaps save a bit on shipping.)
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RE: Reccomend an antenna building book.
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by K5DVW on February 2, 2006
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Absolutely the ARRL Antenna Book! Mostly HF related but besides, you probably will eventually want to build an HF antenna. The same basic physics apply. Understand HF antennas, and you'll understand VHF/UHF too.
New or used, it's a bargain.
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RE: Recomend an antenna building book.
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by WB6BYU on February 2, 2006
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I think I have everything that has been mentioned, except
for CQ-VHF magazine, and many others besides. And I still
haven't found a GOOD book on building antennas.
The problem is that most such books present completed
antennas, as though you have to choose between THIS yagi
design or THAT quad design. That isn't the way the world
works. There are several separate components to any
antenna - the electrical design, the mechanical
construction, the design frequency, and the feed system.
If you see the antenna this way, you know that you can
use ideas from different antennas - and no book that I have
found gives much guidance on this.
For example: I recently built a 3-element yagi for 243 MHz.
The basic yagi design came from an article on 10m
designs by W4RNL here:
http://www.cebik.com/yagi/3lyg.html
That is the basic electrical design, which I scaled up
in frequency, and also adjusted for 1/8" diameter elements
(using formulas from W2PV's book on yagis.) The mechanical
construction consisted of sticking wires through holes
in PVC pipe. (I saw an interesting alternative on some
web page that encouraged folks to build inferior yagis
because they had a 50 ohm feedpoint: I didn't like their
designs, but the construction method was good.) Since
my antenna had a 20 ohm feedpoint, I used the "half-folded"
feed method popularized by WA5VJB, as shown here:
http://www.clarc.org/Articles/uhf.htm
In the end, no one source had an antenna that suited my
needs, but by using several sources I got a nice light-weight
yagi with a clean pattern, and that is mechanically more
robust than I could achieve as easily with a split feedpoint.
Many books will show you antennas you can build, but I
haven't found a good one yet actually about building
antennas.
Meanwhile, my take on some of the available books:
ARRL Antenna Book: always good to have around. If you
like to experiment with HF wire arrays, look for one of
the older ones with the smaller pages as well as a newer
one.
LaPorte's Radio Antenna Engineering: I have an original
copy, which I enjoy reading. There are lots of great
ideas (including the section on transmission lines),
but much of the material is 60 years old, and there
have been some advances since then. Good constructional
advice for 50kW broadcast stations.
ARRL Antenna Compendiums (8 or more volumes by now?):
There are some excellent articles, and some dodgy ones.
I'd say most of the volumes I have are worthwhile, with
3 or 4 useful articles that I am interestd in. Best if
you can check the contents first to see if it suites your
tastes.
Jasik: Antenna Engineering Handbook: A collection of
many technical ideas, with brief summaries or explainations
of each. Good source of ideas, but not much
constructional detail.
Kraus ANTENNAS: A university textbook, considerably
beyond most hams.
Moxon HF Antennas for All Locations: a different
perspective on HF antennas. Some parts help beginners
understand the tradeoffs, some are a bit off the wall.
But a good, informal approach.
ARRL Handbook:
RSGB Handbook:
RSGB VHF/UHF Manual:
These have useful sections on antennas, but tend to fall
into the trap of "build it like this" rather than a
more general "how to build antennas".
W6SAI's antenna books:
73 Antennas of any type:
Some ideas, but not always technically competent. "If
you have a copy you might as well read it, because the pages
are too small for wrapping fish."
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RE: Recomend an antenna building book.
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by WA9SVD on February 2, 2006
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While there's much to be said about building your own antennas by using various ideas and putting them together, that will involve some trial and error. Mixing feed points, feed types, boom material is for the experimenter, probably not the first time builder, as the results can be (and often are, esp. at VHF and above) unpredictable.
The advantage of following a design from one of the antenna books is that if you DO try to be faithful to the original details, you have a good chance of building an antenna that works as well as the original. And some designs are hard to improve upon.
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RE: Recomend an antenna building book.
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by WB6BYU on February 3, 2006
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WA9SVD wrote:
"that will involve some trial and error."
Well, yes and no. Yes, I have built a lot of antennas
over the years, and made some glorious mistakes in the
process. But in my view, if I'm not making some mistakes,
I'm not learning anything new. Especially in the area
of VHF yagis, one can make a lot of mistakes and have a
lot of fun for little cost.
Regarding this particular antenna, however, it worked right
the first time, and gave the expected pattern without any
adjustments or tuning. As have several other antennas that
I have built the same way. True, with my Moxon beams I
adjusted the end spacing to optimize the pattern, but
that hardly is an unacceptable level of "trial and error".
You do, however, need to know what you are doing. Yes,
the way the elements are mounted to a metal boom and the
diameter of the elements will affect the element lengths.
Yes, it helps to know the feedpoint impedance of an
antenna when selecting a feed method. No, you can't just
throw a bunch of elements on the boom based on old wive's
formulas and expect a high-performance yagi. But there
are existing designs and tools available to help with
these. And that is my point about many of the books that
are available: they tend to focus on "build it like this"
rather than providing guidence about what alternatives
are acceptable. If someone presents a design for a J-pole
antenna using 1/2" copper pipe, someone certainly can
build a duplicate. But what if they only a bunch of
3/4 pipe available instead? Or if they have a length
of aluminum channel stock, or electrical conduit, or a
9' CB whip? What if you want to use 75 ohm cable for
the feedline?
I believe a proper book on building antennas should give
some examples to follow, but also give guidance on other
ways it can be done. The truth is, building ham antennas
is rarely as critical as many of the articles make it
appear. (But, of course, you have to know what parts
are important and which are not.) It is that focus on
empowering hams to build antennas with materials they
have on hand, and emphasizing that it really isn't hard
to do so, that I find sorely lacking in the literature.
So my solution is to have an antenna workshop and invite
the local hams to come and build antennas. Or they can
bring an antenna and we can get it tuned up. We'll show
them how to prune a dipole, or help them build a yagi
or quad, or whatever they want to do. And hopefully
when they leave they will have a better sense that it
really can be easy and fun. And they'll have a couple
more designs that they want to build and try out...
It will be in March if someone is in the NW Oregon area
and wants to stop by.
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RE: Recomend an antenna building book.
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by WA9SVD on February 3, 2006
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Good idea for a workshop. My point was that a first time builder may not want to "experiment" too much, (by adding too many variables) and would want to have good results with a known design, and move on from there. But you are correct, antenna building is an art and always a learning experience.
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