[AReU] Next Tuesday

[w4tas]

If everything goes as planned, I will bring some test gear for 
AREU next Tuesday. 

The exercise (nothing physical I assure you) will be to set up 
a test range for a few of the unusual antennas I have collected 
over the years. 

Some of them have been given to me by members of AREU, BARS 
or other ham friends. Others have been collected at ham fests 
or purchased from various sources. 

I have an RF generator and a test antenna for the reference 
signal source. 

Some of the antennas to be tested are: 

1. Small horn (home brew) with waveguide transition
2. Large horn (home brew) with waveguide transition
3. Dielectric (from Ray-W4BYG) with waveguide transition
4. Conical (from Terry WA4BYK)
5. Vivaldi (purchased from Kent Britain WA5VJB)
6. LPDA (purchased from Kent Britain WA5VJB)
7. Spiral (not a helix) (purchased at a long ago ham fest)
8. Open end of a WR90 waveguide transition with tuning stub (from Ray-W4BYG) 
9. Open end of a WR90 waveguide transition without tuning stub (from E-Bay) 
10. I will bring an old Dish Network 18 inch dish and we will see how much 
      extra gain it will deliver over the non enhanced antennas. You will be 
      very-very surprised. 

All of the tests will conducted in the meeting room at a distance of about 
10 ft. The test frequency will be 10223 MHz. 

The signal source will be a converted “brick” oscillator by Ma-Com. It has 
a power output in the neighborhood of 20 to 30 mill watts (not important 
when measuring relative antenna gain). The test receiver will be an 
HP 435 power meter with an 8484 D power sensor. 

I have not performed this test before so I have very little to say about 
the outcome. I know there will be some surprises and some antennas 
that you have never seen before. 

Tony