Excerpt: New Technician ham in Lufkin or Deep East Texas? Learn building a simple beginner hf antenna with practical, beginner-friendly guidance from DETARC. The Short Version A simple antenna teaches more than a complicated purchase. On 10 meters, a beginner antenna can be manageable and affordable. If you are newly licensed, do not measure success by…
This video explains how the Smith Chart helps RF engineers understand signal reflections, match antennas and transmission lines, and improve power transfer. It also explores the chart’s history, the physics behind it, and why it remains useful today.
This is a short followup to my previous article on antenna interactions. My original plan was to mount two wire antennas on a sidearm on the tower. The first is an 80M / 60M fan dipole mounted in an inverted vee configuration and the second is an 80M EFHW mounted as a sloper. I have…
If you have listened to Dave Casler on YouTube or read his column in QST, you probably know his first rule of antennas: “everything affects everything”. I recently had an eye-opening, learning experience when installing a couple of 80M wire antennas. While I thought that there could be some interaction between the antennas, I never…