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:
- bend the triangle portion of coat hangar into shape of circle
- use gerber to cut coat-hangar hook off leaving a pointy end
- stick pointy end of coat hangar into bnc connector, secure with tape
- plug bnc connector into radio
- 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