Homebuilt biquad antenna

[savagedavid]

Guys, here is the link for a very cheap homebuilt biquad antenna. If you make the board 123 x 123 it works better as a standalone unit

http://www.trevormarshall.com/biquad.htm

I have built it quite successfully and it performs quite well for the R30 in parts it cost me

[savagedavid]

Here is another link with better pics:

http://martybugs.net/wireless/biquad/

If you are looking for the components the wire is standard household electrical wire 2.5mm squared (about R8 a metre - good for 6 units or so). The PC board can be bought from Communica in Woodstock, and the connectors up the road from Communica at Falcon (ask at Communica - they will give directions to Falcon)

Check out also this very simple omni:

http://martybugs.net/wireless/collinear.cgi

Happy assembling!

cheers
david

[Eben]

i do agree, it works quite nice it's just the first one that will take some time after that it will take you a couple of mins.

[Mufasa]

how about some prices? how much does it cost to build? prices for the pc boards?

[savagedavid]

pc board - R25 for a piece of 150 x 250 (enough for 2 antenna's)
copper wire - R6 / m (enough for about 8 units - don't use the earth wire it is too thin)
RP tnc + 30cm cable - about R60
15mm sagex (styrofoam) - about R20 for a sheet - good for about 20 units

The biggest cost is the connector - if you can find it cheaper i would also like to know about it

[Eben]

any metal plate will do just fine for the reflector - i did'nt had any available pc board at the time of building my first biquad and the only thing nearest to pc board i could find was a old cdrom so i hacksawed it to the correct dim. and that biquad is still running perfectly over a 8km (perfect LOS) link giving me a avarage throughput of 4-5mbps on 802.11b

[savagedavid]

True any meal plate will do. The nice thing about pc board is that is is stiff but still slightly flexible and very easy to solder onto. Even tinfoil glued onto cardboard will work, though