I believe the definition of an OWA is: A high performance Yagi with wide
bandwidth, low SWR across the band and a direct 50 ohm feed. It was
invented by WA3FET around 1990 and it became very popular. All of the
homebrew monobanders that I built in the last 20 years were OWA fed directly
with no hairpins to adjust. I am sure that K3LR has been using them even
longer. Force12, OptiBeam, JK Antennas, Innovantennas, etc use(d) true OWA
designs.
All of the Hy-Gain and M2 monobanders that I have seen the manuals for are
not directly fed Yagis.
John KK9A
Brian Beezley k6sti wrote:
I licensed Yagi optimization software to both Hy-Gain and M-Squared
Antennas in the 1990s. I believe Mike Staal at M2 got it before Roger
Cox at Hy-Gain. But before that, Dr. James Lawson, W2PV, a physicist,
wrote "Yagi Antenna Design," a book published by the ARRL in 1986. His
FORTRAN program did not employ automatic optimization. I'm sure hams
home-brewed some of the designs, but I don't know if any were offered
commercially.
As long as we're on Yagi history, Mike Staal seems to be the first to
introduce the close-spaced director characteristic of what are now
called OWA designs. Mike regarded the technique as proprietary and kept
quiet about it.
Here is a link to "A Secret Story About the Yagi Antenna," published by
the IEEE. I loved the part about Uda arriving in San Francisco after the
WW II. His reaction at seeing all the TV Yagis on homes is delightful.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=88216
Brian
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