My homebrew HF multiband antenna tipped over during a storm in december 2007. Not a real surprise because the mount was too small to handle the antenna, despite the weight of 8 concrete tiles. I remember that during that evening I was listening to some PSK31 signals on 20m and suddenly they disappeared. A quick SWR check learned me that the antenna was no longer in a vertical position.
Month: March 2008
CQtube, the YouTube for the Ham Radio Community
You all know YouTube but it has now a competitor focussing on ham radio and it’s called CQtube.
There are 59 videos to watch at the moment of this writing.
So pay them a visit on http://www.cqtube.com
Sitemap
Just added a viewable sitemap to my blog. Click on the menu item “Sitemap” to see it in action and let it help you to navigate to the desired page.
Cantenna for the 23cm ATV band
A cantenna is a directional waveguide antenna for long-range Wi-Fi used to increase the range of (or snoop on) a wireless network. Although the original design was based on a Pringles potato chip can, a cantenna can be made from various cans/bottles. These include antennas on both the ground and antennas heightened by means of a pole. While cantennas are useful for extending a wireless local area network (WLAN), the tiny design makes them ideal for mobile applications such as wardriving. The design of the cantenna is so simple that it is often the first antenna WiFi experimenters learn to build.
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantenna”
Repair a Diamond X200 VHF/UHF antenna
I bought my Diamond X200n antenna on a local ham fleamarket in october 2006. It was brand new and never used before. The antenna was mounted on the first of august.
There is about 21m of H500 coax between the transceiver and the antenna. The antenna performs well on 70cm with a very low SWR curve. On 2m however the SWR is not what I expected.
On 146.000 MHz the SWR is 2,3:1 dropping to 1,8:1 on 144.000 MHz. That could be better. My neighbour and amateur ON5NV has the same antenna, so we replaced mine to see if the problem still occurs. It may be the connector or something with the coax.
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