[TowerTalk] Cover antennas - the good news and the bad news

[Michael Tope]

It would interesting to take a known good antenna like a monoband Yagi 
(or perhaps a SteppIR) and do a set of measurements over the course of 
several days to evaluate the measurement repeatability. If someone had 
designs on doing a K7LXC/N0AX type antenna evaluation study, this would 
help determine the size of the error bars for measurements of different 
antennas taken over the course of several days. Stable weather would 
likely be a desirable characteristic of the measurement environment (no 
drastic changes in ground characteristics during the measurement period).

I had to use Google to get the bagpipe joke :-)

73, Mike W4EF............

On 10/31/2020 3:55 AM, Mark - N5OT wrote:
> Great idea.  Do the exercise as well as you can multiple times, throw 
> out the outliers and average the rest.
>
> Drones are changing the world.  Bagpipe players take note.
>
> 73 - Mark N5OT
>
>
> On 10/31/2020 12:17 AM, David Gilbert wrote:
>>
>> I would think that testing antennas today should be easier than it 
>> was when the K7LXC/N0AX report was done, and I don't see why an 
>> antenna range is even needed anymore.  A wideband noise source 
>> mounted on a drone with an appropriately polarized short antenna 
>> could fly around the antenna while a receiver on the ground connected 
>> to the antenna took measurements.  Drones are very stable these days 
>> even in stiff winds, and while I don't think GPS positioning would 
>> necessarily be accurate enough to define near field location, various 
>> ways of doing so from the ground (optical triangulation, tethers, 
>> etc) should be sufficient.  Far field measurements out several 
>> wavelengths could most likely just rely on the GPS coordinates.
>>
>> All of that assumes reciprocity, of course, but even if that was in 
>> question I'd bet that it would be relatively simple and inexpensive 
>> to design/build a small receiver for the drone that forwarded signal 
>> strength data to the ground via an RF or optical link.
>>
>> One big advantage of using the drone, of course, would be that the 
>> measurements could also be taken at the actual operating site, 
>> thereby including the effects of nearby structures.
>>
>> I haven't seen any reports of anyone doing this yet, but I assume 
>> that people already have.
>>
>> 73,
>> Dave   AB7E
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/30/2020 8:35 PM, chetmoore at cox.net wrote:
>>> Not a FLAME. But You would likely benefit from reading the k7lxc 
>>> N0ax  tribander report. After raeading it I ordered the  C31XR.   
>>> Force 12 is no more  but some of their antennas  are  mechanically 
>>> improved and sold by JK and there are A lot newer tribanders  I 
>>> would like to see them  test on their antenna range.  Hint,  tests 
>>> of some of the mosely and hy gain antennas  did not fare all that 
>>> well. I had a TH6, a TH3 , TH7 and  a classic ta33 all of which worked
>>> Pretty well..........in their day.   My th-3 is still a good FIELD 
>>> DAY antenna  and great as a mult antenna to grab  south American 
>>> mults  so I don’t have to  rotate the c31.
>>>
>>> N4fx
>>
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