First light of my homemade cantenna

[andrew....@googlemail.com]

Following advice from members on this group, I’ve had a go at making a cantenna and am amazed at how easy it is to make and how effective – instant results!

See https://astronomy.me.uk/first-light-home-made-cantenna-at-lro-3-3-20241400 to view first light trace.

Given that the Nooelec 1.4GHz mesh aerial went up from £50 to £100 and is now £132 on Amazon, a cheap alternative is really needed!!

This would be great alternative for the SARA Scope in a Box Project.

If I can get my interferometer working then will be really interesting as next step to see if fringes can be obtained with 2 cantennae!!!

Andy

[Edmund Harfmann]

There are multiple "antenna systems" available that work very well:

• DSPIRA – Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy (wvurail.org) demonstrates a horn antenna.  Biggest problem is finding foam board that has real metal instead of "metal looking" plastic.  (Aluminum foil solves that issue.)
  
• Cantenna and integrating the results such as you used.
• "Cruising the countryside" looking for old C-Band antenna that are no longer in service.
• Various 'dish' reflectors are available on ebay/Amazon.
• Digging a hole in the ground/use posts to make something 'similar' to what Arecibo (and many early RT's) used.  (Jodrell Bank Observatory celebrates 70 years of radio astronomy - BBC News)

Each of these has advantages and disadvantages.  (You get a 15' dish.... it won't fit on your apartment balcony!  You need tools and skills to build the horn antenna....)

Best wishes,

Ed

[Facility 406]

Every time I hear "cantenna", I think back to the ones developed in the
late 1990's that were intended for wifi, using a common can from a food
product.

Several years, and many thousands of cantennas later, some even
"professionally" produced and sold commercially, someone bothered to
analyze the design, and found little of it had anything to do with the
frequency range in question, and was worse than just holding a short
wire in the air. It was just a "can", with an "antenna" stuck in it. I
have to wonder if it was just a big joke.

Nowadays, I have several "cantennas". First image at this link comes up
blank, click on the second, or third:

https://wdi.rfwel.com/wireless-devices-info/verizon-ca10002-home-fusion-broadband-cantenna.html/

Kurt

[fasleitung3]

Yes, two cantennas will give you nice fringes (at least from the sun).

As far as various simple antennas and their respective performance is concerned you may want to have a look at papers at https://www.astropeiler.de/beobachtungen-der-21-cm-linie-mit-einfachen-mitteln/

Best,

Wolfgang

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[andrew....@googlemail.com]

That’s good to know!

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sara-list/e517f22fe21e3cc2d9d358ace94c707a47f62291.camel%40googlemail.com.