Fantastic! I’ve had a linked dipole calculated PDF from the old ways sitting around for a while. Your upgraded site should be a good resource for planning out my options better and refining some of the other designs I’m working on (particularly two-elevated-radial 1/4l verticals).
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Excellent site. Thanks. Of course all models are wrong but some are less wronger than others.
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Oh that made me laugh…
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We should have a poll to discuss which is the absolute wrongerest of 'em all. There ARE some real beauties out there…
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Nice and easy to use - thanks
Any plans on adding Yagi calculators?
cheers
John
M0VAZ
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You’re welcome!
Short answer: no.
Although I could add Yagis, the reasons why I won’t are as follows, in no particular order:
- Yagis do not fit in with the remit of the site, which is to provide easy tools to model/develop/design simple and lightweight wire antennas for portable use, for better or worse (or worser?). I realize that the inclusion of Moxons might represent a short step beyond that, but those for portable use are often constructed of wire (OK, with braces to hold the shape), and those for the higher HF bands or VHF are certainly portable, and people in this community DO use them while operating portable.
- The other main consideration of the site is that it focusses mostly (earlier, exclusively) on antennas for the HF bands, although one or two of the designer pages do now extend the available frequency ranges/bands into the VHF or UHF bands after receiving reasonable requests for such extension. Yagis for HF are really not portable, so do not lend themselves to the ethos of the site.
- Yagi is a very broad term, and the type can include countless different configurations of different numbers of elements with different spacings, and so on. A designer page catering for such complexity would itself be overly complex, and I’m trying to keep things as simple as possible in the site. Those interested in modelling Yagis should consider using one of the several professional antenna modelling tools available; my little site is in no way intended to be a substitute or replacement for such tools.
- There are whole families of Yagi types which have already been developed, and which have been modelled extensively to produce finished and tested designs optimized for gain, or bandwidth, or whatever. A quick search online will turn up many such designs.
I am however always ready to consider including other wire antenna types if enough interest is shown.
Cheers, Rob
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Resist “mission creep”.
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Hi Rob,
Lots of improvements since my last visit, thanks! Especially the Half Square, one of my favourites. I’m curious as to why the band selections stop at 15m though? 10m is very popular with the current SOTA 10m challenge and this is a good design for portable-practical gain with a low takeoff angle on 10m?
Thanks again and 73,
Geoff ZL3GA
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Thanks, Rob!
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The reason is very simple - a failure of imagination on my side. I’ve never actually seen a half-square antenna, have not talked with those who have them, and I had not imagined that half-squares for higher frequencies were being used.
No matter - I’ll extend the bands dropdown to include 12m, 10m and 6m - will that be enough? I’ve also discovered some minor errors and omissions in the half-square page which need to be attended to: I’m fixing those now and should get the updated page to the site in a day or two.
Cheers, Rob
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12m/10m/6m will be great, thanks again Rob!
73, Geoff ZL3GA
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Thank you, Rob!
I am another user of half squares, mainly on 10.
72, David N6AN
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The half-square page has now been updated to also include the 12m, 10m and 6m bands. Some other issues have also been taken care of.
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