Sunday, September 20, 2015

Rough Dressler Antenna


I have been using an RTL-SDR to listen for meteors and other signals for a while. With just the supplied little stick antenna. A few efforts to make a DISCONE  and a cheap YAGI failed to complete.
So, when I saw this design,( active-wideband-receiver-antenna-for-sdr article) originally built with copper foil. I tried to make one out of 0.5mm sheet aluminium. I added a 20mm fold point on the long end and 50mm tab on the bottom of the short end. The fold helps to lock in the sheet for a good roll on the 80mm inner tube. The tab folds under the tube and lock the bottom section down. A crimp connection can be made using the tab to attached the cable lead.

I tried it only with a connection directly to the RTL-SDR ( NOOOLEC GREEN NANO) which was connected to the PC using an USB powered 5M extension. Signal and noise levels all rose quite a bit. Next to find a good LNA and see if things get any better,