1296 MHz Station

Finished building another 1296 MHz antenna last night. I have been experimenting with yagi antennas for the 23 cm band lately. Planning on doing some antenna comparisons this weekend. The new antenna was designed using the VK5DJ calculator. This particular antenna has 15 elements on a 3 foot boom. Over the winter, I built one of the WA5VJB "Cheap Yagi's", but have not been able to test it yet. I hope to be able to compare these two antennas over the weekend. This latest antenna was built on a 1/2 inch diameter round boom and is of all metal construction. The "Cheap Yagi", as with all of these antennas was built using a wood boom, in this particular example, I used a 3 foot 1/2 inch wooden dowel for the boom, and brass brazing rod for the elements. When I'm able to check the return loss on these antennas, I'll post the info here. I have a low power signal source that I can use to do relative gain measurements on these antennas. It will be interesting as to how these antennas compare to eachother.