[Antennas] A quick test post.

[KD7JYK DM09]

On 1/25/2021 11:26, wa4geh at empireq.com wrote:
> not dead yet

Cool.  Bummer how things tapered off over the years.  I managed to get 
into the tower talk forum, we'll see how it goes.  From what I recall of 
this group in years past, it was a pretty hard-core experimenters group 
with people working on antenna designs that would blow ones mind!

Right now I'm looking at some more modern test equipment to get some 
antenna responses, a noise source to ~3 GHz, a return loss bridge, to ~3 
GHz, and a software defined receiver.  Three boxes the size of a deck of 
cards each, or less, to replace one to two 6' racks of equipment, and 
drawing mA, instead of several amps each!

Firstly, see what antennas CAN do, as opposed to what they were designed 
to do...  Then, I have boxes, and piles of obscure military, and 
commercial antennas to figure out.  One, a 75 MHz job, that in several 
tests, only resonates around 170 MHz.  One could suspect damage, but I 
have several, and they are all the same in response, even across 
manufacturers.  Clearly there's something I'm not understanding.  So, it 
appears I have a ruggedized wireless microphone antenna, cleverly 
disguised as a cone of silence antenna.

Kurt