L. B. Cebik, W4RNL 1434 High Mesa Drive Knoxville, TN 37938-4443 cebik@utk.edu

Amateur Radio

Amateur Radio is a communications service consisting of operators licensed and regulated in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission. Amateur radio operators, by regulation engage in emergency and other public service communications, maintain technical skills, and foster international good will via communications.

My personal interest in amateur radio focuses on research into and education about antennas and antenna modeling. The listings on this page link to some past and present research (and to some past research updated before posting on these pages). Since these are essentially working notebooks and not polished articles (for the most part), they may contain typos, misspellings, and a few grammatical infelicities. Moreover, they are subject to revision and updating whenever I discover something more accurate, more useful, or more interesting.

Tales and Technicals:
A Little History and a Lot of Antennas

From time-to-time, I shall post some yarns, mostly taken from my collection of old books, manuals, magazines, and handbooks. I shall also occasionally post from the pages of my notebooks some technical information that may be of use to fellow and prospective hams. Since these are notes and some reprints of casual articles, there will be considerable overlap in places--and many large gaps in other areas. Nevertheless, let's begin with these items:

A Little History (and A Little Humor)

• The Wouff-Hong and The Rettysnitch: Lost Traditions? (2-16-98)
• The Wouff-Hong, the Rettysnitch, and the What? The Uggerumph (04-18-2000)
• 10-10 and Lindbergh (2-10-98)
• Q-signals in 1930 (2-10-98)
• The RST Standard of Reporting (10-2-97)
• A Time to Reminisce (2-21-98)
• Why Call "CQ"? (6-20-98)
• Everything Old Is New Again (10-28-98)
• A Ten-Minute Timer That Just Won't Quit (01-29-2000)
• Understanding and Producing Scientific and Technical Articles, Proposals, and Reports (7-28-99)
• On Socio-Cybernetic Modeling (08-20-99)

Antenna Modeling Notes

• Antenna Modeling Programs (11-09-99)
• Notes on Modeling Antenna Elements
• Notes on Modeling and Convergence Testing
• Modeling Loads and Transmission Lines Parts 1-4
• Modeling Trap Antennas
• Preliminary Notes on Trap Placement
• Systematic Trap Modeling
• Why I Use dBi Mostly (6-23-97)
• Some Pitfalls of Careless dBd-ing (6-3-99)
• Getting the Most Out of Antenna Patterns (7-17-97)
• Reading a NEC Deck
• NEC-4 vs. NEC-2 With Stepped-Diameter Correction and Autosegmentation
• Notes on Two Limitations of NEC-4
• Multi-Diameter Dipoles: MININEC vs. NEC-4
• Close-Spaced Wires: MININEC vs. NEC-4
• Notes on Fat-Wire Dipole Convergence
• Modeling the T2FD (6-7-99)
• The Tee-Match: NEC Illusions and MININEC Realities
• Three-Element Yagi Models: Standards of Comparison (6-21-97)
• Modeling 6 Long-Boom Yagis (7-20-98)
• What Can We Expect From a 2-Element Beam? Parts 1-5 (5-9-97)
• Some Model Quads Parts 1-7 (+ 5a) (4-2-99, 2-25-2000)
• LPDA Design and Modeling Data 6 items (10-22-99)
• A 3.5 Octave LPDA of High Potential Performance, But an Antenna that No One Will Build (04-14-2000)
• The Monoband Log-Cell Yagi Revisited Parts 1 and 2 of 4 (3-5-2000)
• Half-Length 80-Meter Vertical Monopoles: the Best Method of Loading Parts 1-5 (5-12-97)
• Where Do I Hang My Hat? (10-31-98)
• A Modeling Perspective on "Ground" Planes Parts 1-5 (6-6-97)
• Vertical Dipoles and Ground Planes: What Antenna Modeling Reports (9-22-98)
• NEC-2 and NEC-4: Reading Trends with Caution (9-12-98)
• Modeling and Understanding Small Beams (7-25-99)

Practical Antenna Notes: Lower HF (Mainly)

• Wi're We Using Wire?
• A Note on Wire Size and Material
• The Zig-Zag Dipole-Doublet
(01-01-2000)
• Unfolding the Story of the Folded Dipole
(03-12-2000)
• The "Ideal" Back-Up Antenna for 80-20 Meters
(04-14-2000)
• Self-Contained Vertically Polarized Wire Antennas: A Family Album Parts 1-5 (5-15-99)
• Voltage Feeding SCV Loops
• Notes on All-Band Use of Vertical-Plane Deltas
• Verticals Without Vertigo (5-13-99)
• Notes on All-Band Use of Horizontal-Plane Loops
• Horizontally Oriented, Horizontally Polarized Large Wire Loop Antennas (3-29-99)
• The All-Band Center-Fed Inverted-L (3-6-99, 6-14-99)
• To Trap or Not to Trap
• Some Notes on NVIS Cloud Burners (3-15-99)
• Vertically Radiating Horizontal Antennas
• The 40-Meter 3-Way Special
• 3 Wires = The Whole World (2-5-99)
• A Triangle for the Short Vertical Operator (2-5-99)
• The IL-ZX Antenna for 40 Meters
• Notes on Full and Shrunken 40-Meter Quads
• Some Notes on Lower-HF Wire Beams
• Notes on a Wire Beam for 80 and 75 Meters
• A Note on Substituting Wire Elements in Lower HF Arrays (3-10-2000)
• Some Notes on Antenna Bandwidth
• Short Beams and Operating Bandwidth
• Don't Be Phased By Phasing

Practical Antenna Notes: Upper HF (Mainly)

• Horizontal and Vertical Yagi Orientation (10-13-98)
• The G4ZU Bird Yagi
• Coils, Linear Loads, and Capacity Hats: An Overview of Small Loaded Yagis
• Director/Driven Element 2-Element Yagis: Some Ideas for 12 and 17 Meters (7-25-99)
• A Trap Small Quad for 12 and 17 Meters
• Horizontal Phased Arrays with Parasitic Directors (8-27-98)
• Moxon Rectangles: 10 Items (2-22-2000)
• The Birdcage Antenna
• The L-Antenna (2-5-99)
• The B-Antenna (2-5-99)
• A 10-Meter LPDA Parts 1-7 (11-21-98)
• 17-15-12 and Simple (5-11-99)
• A Vertical Doublet for 30-10 Meters (12-01-99)
• EDZ Beam Update
• Feeding the EDZ
• The Expanded Lazy-H (4-1-99)
• An Almost Universal HF Back-Up Antenna For the Antenna Farm That Has Everything Else (2-12-99)
• Suppose I Could Have Only One Wire Antenna. . . (3-1-2000)
• The Turnstile: An Omni-Directional Horizontally Polarized Antenna (3-6-2000)
• Calculating the Length of a Resonant Square Quad Loop (3-1-2000, 3-23-2000)
• The HB9CV Phased Array and Gain Comparisons
• Lobe Formation With Height Increases in Horizontal Antennas (4-30-99)
• I Want to Build a 3-Element Yagi Parts 1-4 (8-1-99)
• Stacking Yagis 3 Items (9-17-99)
• 1-2-3: 1 Boom, 2 Bands, 3 Elements Each (3-7-98)
• Three Forward-Stagger 5-Band Yagis from ON4ANT (8-28-98, 4-18-99, 7-16-99)

Practical Antenna Notes: VHF/UHF (Mainly)

• 2 X 3 = 6 (7-25-97)
• Phased Yagis, EDZ Beams, and Landsdorfer-Sacher Yagis (7-28-99, 9-16-99, 4-10-2000)
• The Half-Square on 2 Meters: Parts 1-3 (4-12-99)
• The Moxon Rectangle on 2 Meters (10-01-99)
• Building a 2-Meter Moxon (11-01-99, 12-18-99)
• Corner Reflectors Revisited: Parts 1-3 (4-18-99)
• Modeling the Dual Rhomboid: Parts 1-3 (8-16-99)
• High-Gain, Wide-Band Yagis for 10, 6, and 2 Meters (9-1-99)

Transmission Lines and Impedance Coupling

• 12 Ways to See and Love Your Feeders
• Some (Old) Notes on Home-Brew Parallel Transmission Lines (01-06-2000)
• Values Along a Transmission Line (11-25-98)
• When is a Quarter Wavelength Not a Quarter Wavelength? (2-20-98, 7-15-99)
• Series Matching: A Review (2-5-99)
• Voltage, Current, and Impedance Along a Transmission Line
• Whose Afraid of a Little Matching?
• Notes on a Wide-Band 50/75-Ohm Coax Feed System for Low HF Band Dipoles and Vees
• Link-Coupled Antenna Tuners (updated 5-20-99 with EFJ MB photos)
• Link-Coupled Antenna Tuners: A Tutorial: Parts 1 - 5
• Delta, ATUs, and Losses
• An LCL/LC ATU

Continuing Series

• An-Ten-Ten-nas: a series of articles for 10-10 News on antenna basics having special relevance to 10-meter operation.
• Antennas From the Ground Up: a series of articles on antenna basics for Low Down, the journal of the Colorado QRP Club. The emphasis will be largely on lower HF and wire techniques.
• Antenna Modeling: a series of articles on antenna modeling specially prepared for AntenneX. The series aim is to help antenna modelers get the most benefit and least anguish from their programs.
• Amateur Radio Continuing Education: a series of articles prepared over several years for the annual Proceedings of the ARRL National Education Workshop. The pieces range in scope from a full-scale proposal for a technical education series down to using a blackboard more effectively in the classroom.

Links to Other Antenna Information

I have left the pages of links intact. Although they will not work as links, you may uncover the URLs of some very useful sites by moving the cursor to the indicated link.

These links carry a lot of valuable information and ideas, ranging from antenna fundamentals to advanced topics in antenna design, modeling, feeding, and building. In addition, some provide links to other sites.

Commercial Antenna Manufacturers and Vendors: A collection on known sources, offered because these pages often contain educational as well as commercial information.

Other Amateur Radio Links: A small collection of links to organizations and linkage sites to help you find other good sources of information.

It has been my high pleasure to receive e-mail and regular mail that suggests these materials are of educational and technical service to a broad spectrum of individuals, both in the United States and around the world. Numerous items have appeared in the newsletters and other publications of amateur radio groups. The formal and informal distribution of some of the material, both as written and in translation, in areas where bound publications are unavailable or prohibitively expensive suggests that the energies used to develop and place some of the notes has been productive. So much to learn and so little time to learn it, but always time to share what I have learned along the way--lest it be lost.

Other information will be made available on these pages as time goes by. For now,

-73-

LB, W4RNL