2006-02-28 05:23:00

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2006-02-28 05:23:00
Hey, now I can listen to Derrick flying his helicopter AND know which direction he is from my position!

Not wanting to spend money on one of these I started…

The Coat Hangar Directional Antenna Project

I bought an ICOM-W32A ham radio, ‘TheAnvil’ provided some BNC connectors, and the closet had a coat hangar.

steps:

  1. bend the triangle portion of coat hangar into shape of circle
  2. use gerber to cut coat-hangar hook off leaving a pointy end
  3. stick pointy end of coat hangar into bnc connector, secure with tape
  4. plug bnc connector into radio
  5. the signal is only picked up if it can travel through the loop (in theory, it sort of works from what i can tell).

current issues: the coat hangar is way too receptive–i get 9 bars on stations that give me 3 bars with the regular antenna–so at close range it’s useless. it needs some attenuators to weaken the signal at close range

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