best antenna

[abcd567]

Horseshoe Antenna

Found a very interesting horseshoe antenna made by galenthurber.
Please see this thread

[petercr]

Got up on the roof today and relocated the FR24 antenna from its previous location on the side fence to above the TV antenna... now sitting about 1.2m above the highest point of the roof-line...
(also solved a TV reception issue)
FR24 antenna on roof.jpg

(shot of previous location in this post https://forum.flightradar24.com/thre...l=1#post105113)

[mem0tap]

Screenshot from 2018-07-20 23-06-53.png - results of my 'new' waterpipe antenna. fitted around midday Tuesday, it's mounted 7 feet below Jetvision antenna (which yields around 2400 a day, Since it looks promising I've upped the anti a touch and building an 8 section 22mm outer, 8.5mm inner air spaced.

[Rooster]

Rooster:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9675[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]9675[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]9675[/ATTACH]
Fully agree with you.

Glad to see you after a long gap. Welcome back.

Thanks mate - keep lurking, but not a lot has happened on here :-(

[abcd567]

Below are the simulation results for a CoCo (8-Elements, made of coax VF=0.86).
These results show how a 1 or 2 mm error in element length can grossly affect SWR and Radiation pattern.
Gain is relatively less affected by 1 or 2 mm error.

The error in element length can either due to using wrong VF, or wrong cutting or a combination of both.

In this simulation the a VF of 0.86 was used, giving element length 118 mm.


SWR vs Element Length




Gain vs Element Length




Radiation Pattern vs Element Length

[abcd567]

Despite designing my own antennas I'm not an antenna expert, nobody is, it's a black art, guided by experience and a few rule of thumb calculations. I reckon for every successful antenna there's a few dozen in the bin!

Fully agree

[abcd567]

Rooster:
thumb-single.jpg thumb-single.jpg thumb-single.jpg
Fully agree with you.

Glad to see you after a long gap. Welcome back.

[Rooster]

A couple of questions being no expert in this subjects.
-Can be two different type antennas be plugged at the same time (A spider and a Coco for example)?
-Using a Coaxial antenna can bring much improvement compare to a spider antenna? If so, what type of improvement? An increase in the distance of the planes registered or an increase in the hits/position catched within the same distance?

You cannot connect two at the same time (technically you can, but theres no advantage +its VERY difficult to do correctly)

The spider is a simple "half wave dipole" and as simple as antennae get - the coco (colinear) adds more elements , and so more "gain" ie you can receive further away signals.

The crux of the matter is accuracy... and we are talking fractions of a millimetre at these frequencies - the spider is only critical at the centre element, so you have a good chance of getting "near" - and near enough is usually good enough !!!!

When making multi element antennae, the errors in cutting mount up... and its easy to create an antenna that is far worse than a simple dipole.

[mem0tap]

A couple of questions being no expert in this subjects.
-Can be two different type antennas be plugged at the same time (A spider and a Coco for example)?
-Using a Coaxial antenna can bring much improvement compare to a spider antenna? If so, what type of improvement? An increase in the distance of the planes registered or an increase in the hits/position catched within the same distance?

There are multiple antenna installations (Yagis e.g) - but different types of antenna? - if you did manage to couple them so that all impedances lived well with each other, you would find 'phasing errors' which means the signal would mostly arrive at each antenna at different times sometimes adding sometimes cancelling. I would suggest you either use an antenna switching unit (but there will be losses this way) or have separate receivers. - Despite designing my own antennas I'm not an antenna expert, nobody is, it's a black art, guided by experience and a few rule of thumb calculations. I reckon for every successful antenna there's a few dozen in the bin!

[goku1976]

A couple of questions being no expert in this subjects.
-Can be two different type antennas be plugged at the same time (A spider and a Coco for example)?
-Using a Coaxial antenna can bring much improvement compare to a spider antenna? If so, what type of improvement? An increase in the distance of the planes registered or an increase in the hits/position catched within the same distance?

[mem0tap]

Makes an interesting alternative to electrical conduit that I had my previous CoCo installed in...

So pleased with it, I've designed a prototype using 8.5mm water pipe as a core and 22mm as a shield, 51.3 ohm 66pf/metre 175 nH/Metre, I'll be using 100% air dielectric so propagation will be a shade under 100% with 137mm sections - working on the jigs to build it (as you can see below BUT the soldering Iron is not up to it) and there are other problems I foresee, - no more pipe for one thing!!! and i can only buy it 3m lengths The original prototype seems to be happy to receive echoes from 160nm against the original Jetvision 109nm based only on 24 hours of data. CIMG3761.jpg IF anyone is interested I'll keep posting pictures and progress otherwise I'll save myself some time.

[petercr]

Makes an interesting alternative to electrical conduit that I had my previous CoCo installed in...

[mem0tap]

Ok, I looked at the design of several Coaxial co-linears and decided I'd have a go at building my own. Based on my knowledge of Satellite systems and knowing the larger the area of the dish the more sensitive it is to weaker signals, I thought I'd try something with a little more surface area. Secondly because of the 'skin effect' at 1090 Mhz, I'm not convinced coax is an ideal medium for the Job.
After some calculations I arrived at using 18 guage Tinned copper wire for an inner and 15mm copper water pipe as the outer. Whilst pottering around in the garden I hit upon the idea of using bamboo cane as the dielectric, after all it's a very dry, and has a rather convenient hollowness about it. - Here are pictures of the prototype, which is working rather well and outperforming a Jetvision antenna mounted some 7 feet higher up!CIMG3757.jpgCIMG3758.jpgCIMG3759.jpgCIMG3760.jpg Characteristic Impedance 45.7ohms - feeder 50ohms, next step to build the filter and dongle inside with the antenna, I have tested a 10metre proprietary USB2 extension lead (with built in buffer) and it works fine with a respberry PI - looking at using 1" copper pipe and a more efficient spacer for the Mkii!.

[Coxy]

I am using two spiders, one which just uses the coax with the legs pushed into the shield and the other is using a S0-239,PI-259 setup. Both are as effective as the other. The cantenna was great as well but a little less range the the spiders.

[abcd567]

@Oblivian
Thank you so much for using your Super Moderator authority to change/shorten the thread title.
The title now sounds much better.