Dale wrote: <snip all> Dale, I am not the SARA mailing list. If possible would you field a request for any _portable_ Yagi designs that would be appropriate for use for radio meteor scattering with the SNOTEL system at 40.53 mhz? Slumming the net, I located the following three portable _6 meter_ designs, principally based on using whip antennas as the horizontal side elements for a Yagi: ARRL ANTENNA Vol 5 COMPENDIUM (2003) A portable 6 meter Yagi http://www.shelbrook.com/~ve7ca/AntA6m.htm A portable 6 meter by Bruce H. McIntosh WA4UF http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=17038 and a Moxon - http://www.moxonantennaproject.com/backround.htm - which seems to be easily adaptable to make a 40mhz portable antenna that would fold up into a nice 4 foot by 1 foot sack. Expanding the two Yagi designs to the SNOTEL frequency at 40.530 MHz with a portable design looks impractical. The horizontal elements just get to big. At this moment, the Moxon is the front runner in my mind because it appears to be practical to build a sufficiently small portable antenna. My question is this: 1) If I were to build a 6 meter portable for use on detecting meteor reflections from Channel 3 TV sidebands, what kind of db increase could I expect if the antenna is not matched to the transmission signal. 2) Since using TV Channel 3 sidebands as a beacon will be going away soon with the HDTV transition leaving the SNOTEL master transmitter at 40.530 MHz as the beacon, can I still use this kind of 6 meter antenna to detect a signal, and if so what kind of dB, since the antenna and signal are not matched? Thanks again for your patience with this newbie question. Here's a list of the antennas, frequencies and signal strengths that I compiled from the RMOB live station web page - to see what others are using: http://www.sportscliche.com/wb2fko/N0PB.wav Location Antenna Freq (mhz) Alt orientation France ITA-102 2 element 50mhz 59.257 0 Canada 5el Log periodic 61.260 90 Canada 2 element quad 61.260 0 USA (CO) 5 element yagi 55.260 45 Spain 3 element yagi 49.739 20 UK 1/4 wave dipole 48.25 n/a UK 1/2 wave vertical 55.250 n/a France Yagi 5 element 48.2493 0 UK T2FD folded dipole 55.249 30 Belgium crossed dipole 49.990 45 Belguim 2 element quad 49.990 31 Belguim 2 element yagi 49.990 52 UK Jaybeam 3 element yagi 55.25 0 Spain TV 3 ele yagi 55.249 15 US (CO) Discone 61.25 ssb n/a - Kurt P.S. - Here's a guy in New Mexico who did something similar at 144Mhz using a smaller _portable_ Yagi appropriate for that frequency. http://www.sportscliche.com/wb2fko/ms.html At that higher frequency the radio meteors are not counted, but they make a cool noise when entering the atmosphere - http://www.sportscliche.com/wb2fko/N0PB.wav ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping