....and so begins.... my own, personal, 24 hour *"McNeil Marathon"!* ,and .... _"I Hope you'll join me on the next one!"_ Your RF knowledge is priceless brother, Thanks for the education ;)

Hey andrew! Glad youve started making videos about SDR! I myself have just found this amazing technology. New to RF in general really. You should make a guide on how to build the antenna needed to pull images from the NOAA satellites that all the SDR guys like doing!

I love the shower pole antenna! Brilliant! We're opposites. I play in the under-1gHz range. Thus is definitely in my comfort zone. It is also my 1st look at SDR kits. Your 2.4 and 5.8 projects have helped me greatly. Thank you.

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Glad you found them interesting. Yes I thing using a adjustable shower pole as an antenna my well be a first. :-)

What a brilliant idea for extendable SDR antenna, Really interesting to see this, I play with SDR using its full spectrum and often such antenna would really cover wide range of that spectrum. Thanks Andy

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks Hassan

Daleks, Overseeing all you do. That's neat.. Good video, gave me a couple of ideas. Thank You...

An outstanding project. Thanks.

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it

Very clever idea Andrew. I've been using a pretty standard roof mounted VHF discone for my SDR follies. Not portable but it works very well from 50MHz to 1GHz and has a whip for 27MHz CB as well. I tried making a couple of TV ribbon cable J-pole antennas tuned for 120MHz (air band) and 470MHz (UHF CB). Both were very portable and worked quite well.

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Thanks Verm I did consider a discone for the first build as like you say they are very wideband

My problem is I live in a small valley that is about around 100 feet below the crest of the ridge all the way around it. Even FM radio is a PITA to receive here. Anything I receive would be a bounce. As others have chimed in......Many thanks for the 5.8 and 2.4 projects you've put up. They really help us little boys play with our drone toys. It's always really satisfying to build an antenna and have it perform well and know you spent about nothing to build it, considering the prices of some of them - even on Chinese sites.

Great detail and improvisation with COTS materials sir. From my experience a great antenna for these SDR's is the Discone Antenna. Also, from your inspiration and one other commercial source... I picked up a broken tip foam core in a conical shape that I was planning on making a large spiral conical antenna as reads like those work great for gain throughout a broadband range. However, I never did get around to theoretical maths on this. I also, picked up a steel parabolic sled for a dish reflector that I really crudely rigged three winters back and have like the discone in the barn that is not where I am working. Another idea might be using the SDR as an antenna analyzer. I'm thinking people will like seeing that in more details since the few regarding Spektrum for antenna analysis aren't that detailed like you do... especially if you can compare performance between the real spectrum analyzer and SDR antenna analysis. Finally, an interesting idea I'd like to try is to take the monopole of the discone (or really any antenna) and cover with a fractal antenna design tube with a foam spacer. I've watched this video and looks like significant improvement in performing I'd guess like a directing element passive sympathetic resonance effect: kzread.info/dash/bejne/g4uYktB-iKnUoqg.html

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Hi Jafinch thanks for the feedback, yes I will look at the discone sometime in the future as they are so broadband. I have seen a few videos of people using these cheap SDRs as an analyser it does look interesting.

Hi Andrew, I'm new to all this, could you explain why dips in the spectrum analyzer signifies a good signal? I would expect the peaks to show good signal, clearly I am at a misunderstanding. Thank you for your videos.

Andrew - An interesting project. But I didn't quite get how you decided on the various lengths of the components. Why 1 meter for the loop portion, and why 600 mm for the top ?

I'm concerned about damaging my LimeSDR by not using the proper antenna (too much gain, etc). In general, how do you know what type/length of antenna you need for a given application? For example, if you wanted to rx/tx FM (100Mhz) radio vs HDTV (54-700Mhz).. the former may work with a 2' whip/telescope style, but the latter requires something totally different? Or active vs passive antennas, how do those fit into the picture?

Is a 'loading coil' the same thing you used to see on those old mobile carphone antennas......where they have a coil in the middle of the actual wire? It's just to take up some length so the antenna isn't so long?

@andrewmcneil

2 жыл бұрын

Yes

One thing I don't understand is how you soldered all those different metals, could you explain?

@haraldhaporta425

6 жыл бұрын

Whahaha what a bullshit..

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

It was easy just used the soldering iron and made sure everything was cleaned. I will be using the bits I chopped in the next SDR build so I will go into more detail for you.

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Stick to horses mate

Still waiting wifi umbrella part 2

@andrewmcneil

6 жыл бұрын

Should be able to do it next week

@thecentralscrutinizer5105

6 жыл бұрын

Only 1 man ...with way more on two plates even, give 'em a bit of time couz ;)