TV Rabbit Ears for 2m ?

[Rafael Solis]

It would be possible to make a (portable) 2m dipole with a TV rabbit
ears antenna. Each each of this antenna extends from 10'' to about
40''.

Would it work just by soldering a coax and (BNC) connector? Has anyone
tried this? Any encouragement will be appreciated.

Rafael, KE6JSR

[J. E. Winburn]

Rafael Solis (raf...@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU) wrote:
: It would be possible to make a (portable) 2m dipole with a TV rabbit

: Rafael, KE6JSR
:
Very interesting....
I would think that you would have to remove the 300 ohm ribbon line
from the rabit ears and solder the BNC connector directly to the two
elements of the ears and carefully mark the elements at their extended
point that is resonant at your desired freq.

The rabit ears are still a little bulky however. I use 300 ohm
ribbon line cut into a Jpole configuration for my portable VHF and
UHF antenna. You will have gain over the dipole and true portability
that you can fold up and place in your shirt pocket. There have been
several post on this antenna including a program that will calculate
the lengths of the Jpole elements.
Beau..KD4GFY

[Kelly Gray]

I have made just such an antenna from the pair of rabbit ears that came with
an old RCA TV set. The antenna elements are extended in a straight line, with
each side being extended to one-half wavelength. The coax is connected directly
to the end of the 300 ohm twinlead that was originally designed to go to the
TV.

As near as I can figure, the antenna is acting as a two element colinear array
that is fed between the two elements. The short length of twinlead that is
connected there appears to be doing two things, matching the 50 ohm impedance
of the coax to the very high impedance of the end of each halfwave element, and
also providing the 180 degree phase shift needed for driving one of the
elements in the array.

The setup would probably work even better with a 1:1 balun between the coax
and the twinlead, but what the heck, it's cheap, portable, and works reasonably
well as is. I'm getting a near perfect match across the entire 2m band, with a
vswr of less than 1.1. It gets the signal out sufficiently well that I can
reach repeaters abt 40 miles away from inside my 12th floor balconey with it,
and the only radio I have is an HT-202 handheld.

--

<o_o> Kelly Gray
gr...@feline.uucp (preferred)
gr...@admin.humberc.on.ca