Best antenna for Airband

[prcguy]

Within an old RadioShack publication on antennas are directions for constructing a 1/4 wave ground plane that works incredibly well. It can be made to any center frequency for VHF/UHF. This antenna can likely be found on the internet. The publication has been out of print for quite some time now.

It is made from an SO239 panel mount jack and measured lengths of 14 or 12 ga copper wire. If necessary, it can be made of coat hanger wire.

This can be hung in an attic, or mast mounted.

I'm still using one that I made 20 years ago. It is cut for the civil aviation band, but it still receives very well on both sides of it.

To cover the roughly 20MHz of VHF air you would probably want to make a folded monopole ground plane. A simple ground plane made from wire will not cover the entire band very well. If you look at commercial VHF air ground planes they have very fat elements or they are a folded monopole. Here is one example of a commercial version.

 

[majoco]

Here's my folded dipole made from a cut down TV antenna. The arms are 60cm/24in long and I kept the TV balun which is still in the orange box. Omni directional and has a bit of gain as it's mounted vertically.

 

[Ubbe]

Can you tell me how the loop antenna for the UHF is connected with this indoor antenna in the picture below?

Its a low pass filter for the rabbit ears, the telescopes, and a high pass filter for the loop that are made of coils and capacitors so that VHF are received by the rabbit ears and UHF frequencies from the loop.

/Ubbe

 

[FlyBoyUK]

For what it's worth, for air-band reception I use a very basic 1/2 wave dipole mounted on the side of my loft here in East London, UK.

Obviously your height above MSL and surrounding topography will have the greatest influence on the signals that you receive at those frequencies. Here in London I am only around 60ft above sea level and surrounded by tall buildings so am not best placed.

I can still hear ATC at my home airfield at Denham (approx 30 miles) and Gatwick and Heathrow ATC come in clearly on my RSP1A at S9.
I can also clearly hear "en-route" aircraft over Wales, Northern England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Expensive doesn't always mean best

 

[KF5IO]

Depends on your budget. Lots of good antennas for the airbands out there if money is no object. If you want to homebrew you could put together a delta or quad loop oriented horizontally for just a few dollars.