send antenna

I decided to build a POTY antenna, because it is not expensive, it can be integrated with the Bulls Eye, so you only need one dish.

I bought a kit for the antenna, build it together according to the documentation and tried to measure the performance of the POTY.

That was not directly a success. The POTY has to be soldered together very accurately (3.0 mm distance between ground plate and radiator plate), but after soldering with a flame,....the plate of 1 mm thick was not flat anymore,...! Well you can bend and bend back, but I did not succeed to get a good measurement on my miniVNA. So I asked a metal company to make me some 3mm thick ground plate brass metal, and 2mm thick radiator brass metal. It was not cheap but it is much more stable and after measurement it was very  good. In the first picture you see the difference between the 1 mm and the thicker version on the right.

In the second picture you see the thicker version (3mm ground, and 2mm radiator) connected to a calibrated miniVNA.

The result is pretty good I would say. Two nice dips in the SWR around the 2400 MHz. These make sure that the antenna is having a good circular polarization. The antenna is left-handed polarizing, the offset dish is reflecting it, so it will be right handed, and that is what the satellite needs.

The dips are about 30MHz from the center. The full scale is going from 2300 to 2500MHz.

 

 

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