c.coyle
Fighting the Dunning-Kruger effect.
This is a crude prototype of a Moxon antenna for FM reception. It's basically a two element beam with an unbalanced feed point, driven element and reflector. There is a good bit of information on this antenna, including here, here, and here.
I built the prototype on a big piece of cardboard. I sized it for 90 mhz, since most of my listening is at the bottom of the dial. Dimensions of the rectangle are 44.5 by 17.25 inches.
The elements are 22 AWG solid bell wire, duct taped to the board. It's fed with RG174 75 ohm coax. This is about a 50 ohm antenna, but the mismatch should be negligible.
The antenna is laying horizontally on a plastic shelf, about 7 feet off the floor. As you can see, there are some amps underneath it which no doubt affect the pattern. Nevertheless, it is definitely directional, and clearly better than my rabbit ears when comparing the same stations.
If I like it, I may build a permanent version with dowel spreaders or some sort of rotatable frame.
I built the prototype on a big piece of cardboard. I sized it for 90 mhz, since most of my listening is at the bottom of the dial. Dimensions of the rectangle are 44.5 by 17.25 inches.
The elements are 22 AWG solid bell wire, duct taped to the board. It's fed with RG174 75 ohm coax. This is about a 50 ohm antenna, but the mismatch should be negligible.
The antenna is laying horizontally on a plastic shelf, about 7 feet off the floor. As you can see, there are some amps underneath it which no doubt affect the pattern. Nevertheless, it is definitely directional, and clearly better than my rabbit ears when comparing the same stations.
If I like it, I may build a permanent version with dowel spreaders or some sort of rotatable frame.
