Chapter 6 – Antennas

Antennas are the key to radio — without them, signals are not transmitted or received.  Amateurs enjoy building and experimenting with antennas and you will, too!  Section 6 covers this important section in detail.

Antennas

• How Antennas Work - a collection of antenna articles
• The ARRL Antenna Book - the amateur’s standard reference for information on antennas, feed lines, and propagation
• Antennas - Service and Education - L.B. Cebik W4RNL’s informative Web site on antennas
• Antennex - antenna experimenter Web magazine

Transmission Lines

• ARRL TIS Transmission Lines - articles and references about feed lines and SWR
• ARRL TIS Antenna Tuners - information on impedance matching equipment

Table 6-1 Feedline Characteristics

The table printed in the 1st printing of the General Class License Manual is in error. The following table contains the correct typical loss data for several popular types of coaxial cable.  Cable loss and other parameters such as velocity of propagation vary between manufacturers and sometimes from batch to batch.  If you are using the cable in a way that depends on an exact value, measure the cable with test equipment.  The values in the table below were calculated using the on-line calculator at Times-Microwave ().