[time-nuts] DIY antenna

[quartz55]

Haven't seen this posted in the past, but I haven't seen everything.  Anyhow, it appears to work as good signal strength wise as the PCTEL antenna I got with this Nortel unit.  Of course it needs to be installed in some PVC or similar.  The chip was only about $3 from mouser (MAALSS0042-38878), I've got maybe 5 more and I made the board by trimming a single sided board with exacto knife.  I'm going to try another and get the elements more precise, these are somewhat not round and of not equal lengths, plus I'm going to run some coax through a piece of brass tubing as an infinite balun, but I'm not expecting to see any or much improvement.  This one is made from semi rigid line, thanks Jim.  It was easy enough to do, just very detailed soldering and my soldering tools are really not small enough to work on these surface mount devices.  So far I've only used it sitting on the deck railing which is not a great location, but then I don't have any great locations for GPS antennas.

This is after I re-worked it, originally it didn't work very good, I think some of my solder joints weren't good, it's so hard to see.  I have to use one of those headband things with all the mag to see the details and it's impossible to solder on it with the headband mag.  I use a large magnifier with the round fluorescent tube around it.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg287/DogTi/time/diyant_zps7849aa73.jpg

Dave
N3DT