Monday, June 15, 2009

WA5VJB Cheap Satellite Yagi

Well, I was a bit bored tonite. I've been having trouble with the 2 meter portion of my satellite antenna lately. I think water got into the balun and screwed it all up. So, I've been working on replacing the VHF portion of the antenna with a 3 element version of WA5VJB's Cheap Yagi.

This antenna is an interesting design. It uses half of a folded dipole (Kinda like a 'J' shaped element) for the driven element. With the driven element alone, the SWR and feed resistance is VERY low, but when the reflector is brought real close, the SWR goes down. The spacing is strange, something like 8 inches between the driven and reflector, and the director is about 18 -19 inches in front. I'm not sure how this works, but apparently it does.

When I get the VHF portion done, I need to build the UHF one, and tune it to 432 MHz and sweep it to see how flat the SWR is between 432 and 436 MHz. The current antenna has horrid performance on AO-7, but it seems to receive well on AO-51's downlink.

Will keep you up to date as to how the antenna is coming along. My analyzer's battery is dead and is charging now, so looks like I'm done playin for tonite.

2 comments:

  1. Hey, thanks for adding anonymous to the profile options. I'm struggling with a new Netgear FVG318 router here this morning, Verizon decided not to recognize it for some reason this morning. Back on now. Brian is stopping by this afternoon (Sat) to run some twt checks. 73 Mike

    ReplyDelete
  2. Decided to check out your page after message on FB.
    73
    Bill ab9qu

    ReplyDelete

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