Photographs of some of our work

It sometimes happens that radio broadcasters need the best possible reception of a distant FM signal, probably a sister station or one of their own far-flung relays. On a couple of occasions we’ve been unable to get acceptable results with a standard 87–108MHz aerial, so we’ve resorted to making a narrowband aerial from scratch.

The gain and directivity of a standard FM aerial is compromised to some extent by the bandwidth, and an aerial tuned to a specific frequency has a considerable advantage. It isn’t actually that difficult to make an aerial this way. We start with standard dimensions and then ‘proceed empirically’. This is a fancy way of saying that we tinker with the dimensions whilst watching the signal meter. We normally make a basic six-element yagi with a folded dipole. For anyone wanting to have a go at this, the dimensions that seem to work for us are here (PDF).

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