Glad to know you are a DIY enthusiast.
Most members are interested in getting good performance, rather than being interested in DIY. For them the best option is to buy a commercial antenna.
When you are finished with testing the Cantenna, you can try “V-Stub” ground plane antenna, details of which are given below: Although I could not measure the Gain value as I dont have such costly equipment, I have done a Computer Simulation which shows it has a gain of 4.3 dBi which is 2.1 dBi higher than 2.2 dBi of Spider and Cantenna.
That’s a cool, simple design, thanks. It decided to rain today so I won’t be going on the roof until tomorrow.
I have another question for the group, at what RSSI level do your signals start to drop off, with my current spider 1/4w in the living room I get about 55-60nM max, and an RSSI of -28. Just wondering what you flatlanders get in better conditions?
Well wooohooooo! Rain stopped, I put up the cantenna, no preamp, just 12’ of RG-400 into the RTL-SDR and I’m seeing planes out at 125NM at -29dBi, amazing the difference. Antenna is only about 15’ above the ground, 6’ above the roof, cool!
The heywhat’sthat prediction is pretty darn accurate, planes dissapear in the nulls and pop out again where it says they should. Neat stuff.
It looks like you had some nice recent tropo ducting across the Med.. If you click though the forecast charts in the link below, it looks like it will be even better later this week.
