Your First Antenna!  A Hamquick Feature Article To begin this week's article, I am going to tell a short story. It goes like this: "OK Bob, I will contact you tomorrow. Oh, and before I forget, Luke, you have a very poor signal into the repeater. I can barely hear you.", heard Luke on his radio as he was chatting with his friend on a local repeater1 frequency. Luke was disappointed. He had just bought a small Alinco brand hand held radio to use on the Two Meter ham band. He had already made a few friends and enjoyed participating in the RACES nets. The only problem was no matter where he went, or what he did, he just couldn't get a good quality signal into the repeater. His tiny palm sized radio just didn't have the high power he needed. And he was constantly being reminded of it every time he spoke with his friends. What is Luke to Do? There is a simple solution. For less than it costs to buy a higher powered radio or new station antenna, Luke, can build his own, with good results. The simplest and easiest to build antenna is called the Loop Antenna. It consists of a loop of wire, either in a circle, triangle or square, that is soldered to short piece of coax, and an antenna connector. Antenna Construction The antenna consists of 81 inches of insulated wire, a short piece of RG-58 coax with Male BNC connectors on both ends, and a Female Chassis Mount BNC connector(you may also need an SMA adapter), and some masking tape. All these parts can be found at Radio Shack, at a local ham radio store, or in a friends junk box. Tools: Soldering Iron. Wire strippers/Knife or sharp tool. To construct, measure out 821/2 inches of wire. Strip about 1 inch off of one end of the wire, and strip a half inch off of the other end of the wire. Heat up a soldering iron, and solder the short end of the stripped wire, to the center pin of the chassis mount BNC connector. The long stripped end, needs to be wrapped around the BNC. You will have to loosen a hex nut, before there is a large enough gap for the wire to wrap around the bottom of the connector. Once it is loose, wrap the wire around the exposed connector, and re-tighten the nut, so the wire is securely attached. Take the BNC connector and connect it to the piece of coax. The coax should have BNC connectors on both ends. One end goes to the radio, the other attaches to the BNC you were just working with. Lastly it is time to play! Right now you should have a flimsy loop of wire hanging off of a BNC connector on one end of a piece of RG-58 Coax. Find a window in your home, that is large enough to accommodate the loop wire of the antenna. Take the antenna and using the masking tape, attach it to the window in a square, rectangle or triangle shape. Remember to make sure that the loop does not cross over itself at any point, but is stretched out across the entire window. Also, the BNC connector should be on the lower half of the window. The free end of the coax can now be connected to your radio. Performance The antenna should improve signals over the antenna provided with your hand held radio on local repeaters and over simplex paths. You should be able to notice a difference in signal quality. If you do not, then there are a few things you can check. 1.) Make sure the antenna is vertically polarized. The antenna should be so that the coax hangs from the middle of the bottom wire of the square/rectangle described. 2.) Make sure the loop is securely connected to the chassis mount BNC, and the connection is soldered well. One end should be soldered to the center pin, the other secured to the shield of the connector. 3.) Make sure the wire is nearly 81 inches in total length. Make sure that no part of wire in the window overlaps another part of the loop, or is twisted together. Optimum configuration is when the wire is stretched out over the largest area of the window in a square or similar shape. !!! Cautionary Statements/Hazards !!! Do not use this antenna with more than five watts. (If you do, it could be a fire hazard.) If you have aluminum blinds or any metal objects closer than 3 feet from the antenna have them removed. While operating, the aluminum blinds should be drawn up completely so that you can see the antenna on the glass. If you do NOT do this with your blinds, the antenna will be useless! Normal cloth curtains, or vinyl blinds are fine, as long as there is no metal material in them, and you do not use more than 5 watts. 1 Repeaters: Special transceivers located atop tall buildings or high mountians which are used to rebroadcast signals heard on one frequency on another, allowing weaker stations to obtain an extended range an dimporved signal quality. Make sure to tune in next week, for the next in this series ... » Ham Radio Digital Frontier Would you like to post this on your website?  Reprint information, Hamquick Reprint Rights Copyright 2002. Samuel Szarka. www.hamquick.com