I recently attended a lecture on small antennas at the RSGB convention by Professor Mike Underhill G3LHZ (pictured on the right with me). Mike asked me to take my 20m EH antenna along (which has been featured on this blog) so that he could take some measurements with his miniVNA.
I set it up on a tripod in the seminar room and hooked it up to my Yaesu FT-817. What surprised me (and the delegates) was the fact that it was receiving signals from around Europe at up to S9 +20dB.
OK, a dipole could have done the same, but for a four foot antenna mounted on a tripod indoors that's pretty good. The antenna was built for my RSGB "Stealth Antennas" book (available now from RSGB and on their website soon) and has now been put back in my loft, where it happily offers a 1.4:1 SWR and signals that get close to my other antennas, sometimes beating them.
Say that it works by Poynting Vector Synthesis (PVS) and the experts go mad. But think of it as a short, fat dipole with a matching network and it still does the same job and everyone is happy ;-)
As one delegate said: "My friend lives in a flat and would love one of these".
Click on my link to read more or see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/eh-antenna/
UPDATE: "Stealth Antennas" now for sale on RSGB website.
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