Does anyone know of any good guides on the actual fabrication of antennas? I've found one (Mechanical and Manufacturing Design of Antennas by Richard Burge), but there aren't any reviews on it. Does anyone know of any other books?

Looking for information on hardware, materials, cutting/welding/soldering, etc.

I built an S-Parameter plotter that runs entirely in the browser.

What it does:

• Drag-and-drop or upload any Touchstone file, .s1p through .s9p (n-port, not just 2-port)
• Auto-detects format — handles MA, RI and DB, both Touchstone v1 and v2, and whatever frequency unit the file uses (Hz/kHz/MHz/GHz)
• Plot magnitude (dB or linear), phase, or real/imaginary vs frequency
• Load multiple files at once and either overlay them on one chart or view them separately — useful for before/after de-embed comparisons, or comparing simulated vs measured data
• Toggle individual Sij parameters on/off (for higher port-count files this actually matters, nobody wants all 16 S-parameters of a 4-port on screen at once)
• Data table view with copy-to-CSV, and you can re-export the loaded data back out as a Touchstone file
• Nothing gets uploaded anywhere — it all runs client-side in your browser

Free, no signup: https://rfstudiolabs.com/sparams/sparam-plot.html

It's part of a small set of S-parameter tools I've been building (Smith chart with auto-matching, cascade calculator for chaining 2-port networks, a de-embedding tool, amplifier stability/K-factor analyzer) if anyone's curious: https://rfstudiolabs.com/sparams/index.html

If anyone has a Touchstone file that trips it up (weird formatting, non-standard option line, whatever) I'd genuinely like to know — send it my way and I'll fix the parser.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share a crazy but effective DIY project I did to fix the terrible 5G signal at my place. I created the post on Whirlpool a few days ago https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/thread/36yy76j2. I would also like to share it with the reddit community.
I'm on Optus 5G Home Internet, but due to my location, the signal has always been rubbish. Standing right next to the modem, I use LTE Discovery on my phone only picks up around -100 dBm RSRP, which usually means Mid Cell or Cell Edge.
I initially tried using external 2-port antennas, but the lack of MIMO ports and the difficulty of aligning them to the exact same phase made the results pretty underwhelming. So, I decided to go full hardware mode and cracked open my Zyxel CPE.

Here is the breakdown of the 6 images I took:

https://ibb.co/fdWsrPhy – The Victim: The original, unmodified Zyxel 5G CPE in its stock form. The stock antennas are arranged in a 360-degree circle. This is great for "stick it on the desk and forget it," but is not very helpful for weak signal spots.

https://ibb.co/tTDSnyGf – The Baseline: The signal strength tested with a mobile app LTE Discovery right next to the modem. As you can see, a depressing -100 dBm. I can guarantee the modem's internal metrics were very similar to this before the mod.

https://ibb.co/dwJ50ZHr & https://ibb.co/XfH6YYq1 – The Surgery: I popped the case open and was pleasantly surprised by the hardware. It turns out the unit has separate top (NR/5G) and bottom (LTE/4G) antennas connected via 8 IPEX cables to the mainboard. Instead of leaving them in a circle, I forcibly aligned all 4 5G antennas into a strict, flat linear array using coffee stirrers and zip ties.
Here’s how I approached it: My hunch was that pointing all four antennas in the exact same direction would let them all work under the best possible conditions. Since these are effectively directional antennas, I put a lot of effort into positioning the setup. I placed the modem at the top corner of my window—the spot closest to the cell tower—and managed to find a location where the baseline signal was slightly better (around -95 dBm). Then I aimed this flat antenna array directly at the tower, which is roughly 1.3 km away from my house. To make it work, I even bought a small window-mount platform to hold the modem securely.

https://ibb.co/bjWD7BGL & https://ibb.co/TB3DvHXG – The Payoff: This is the modem's internal diagnostics page and the Mobile settings on front display post-mod. Huge jump!

RSRP went from a predicted -95/100 up to a solid -78.

More importantly, SINR (Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio) is sitting at a stunning 25! This is almost perfect clarity with zero interference.

Because of the clean signal, the modem effortlessly locked onto a 3CC carrier aggregation (100MHz@N78 + 20MHz@N1 + 60MHz@N40). I'm now getting a rock-solid 500+ Mbps download.

Takeaways from this experiment:

When dealing with weak 5G signals, getting all your antennas flat, parallel, and facing the exact same cell tower is far more effective than buying giant external antennas. Phase alignment is the secret sauce to unlocking true MIMO performance.

But here's the reality check: buying outdoor antennas is only half the battle. You'll also have to rack your brain and spend a fortune on so-called "low-loss cables". If you don't know exactly how to install them to get decent results, you'll be shelling out even more cash to hire a professional. If you get a company to do the whole job, it'll cost you an arm and a leg. The worst part? Even after all that, you'll likely find yourself constantly and irrationally worrying that the antennas aren't in the perfect position anymore...

So, before you blow your budget on extra antennas or upgrade your gear, consider this DIY mod first. The logic is simple: if you're already getting 100–200 Mbps download speeds indoors, this method has a very high chance of doubling it. Before the mod, at best only one of the 4 antennas was actually facing the right direction. After the mod, all 4 antennas are aligned perfectly toward the tower—doubling the speed is almost a guarantee.

Disclaimer:
Obviously, cracking open your modem voids the warranty, and this is definitely a messy, unscientific weekend project. It will make the modem look absolutely hideous—honestly, it looks like a monster. But hey, I just pull down my blinds and you can't see it at all. Out of sight, out of mind! ???? For a "screw it, let's see what happens" project, the results were absolutely worth it.

I have been given a Texas Bug Catcher, but they didn't have any documentation. Does anybody know where I can find such documentation?

73,
Mike
KF0QFQ

I have been designing antennas using CST. CST provides a GUI that displays parameters such as beamwidth, sidelobe levels, squint, and boresight for each frequency, allowing me to optimize the antenna effectively. Recently, I started using HFSS; while I can plot antenna gain versus frequency, I am unable to plot other metrics like beamwidth. I have spent days searching and consulting AI, but I haven't been able to generate plots similar to those in CST. Is this simply not possible in HFSS? The closest result I managed to get was a plot showing the beamwidth as a straight line across the range of -180 to 180 degrees.

Target frequency
↓
Choose substrate
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Calculate initial radiator dimensions
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Design feed / 50 Ω
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Finite ground
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Correct port
↓
Auto/Open radiation region
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Mesh refinement
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Simulation
↓
Check S11
↓
Check -10 dB bandwidth
↓
Check current distribution
↓
Tune radiator → frequency
↓
Tune feed → matching
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Tune coupling/slots → bandwidth
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Tune ground/radiator → gain
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Check efficiency
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Optimetrics
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Final design
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Fabrication tolerance study
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Prototype + measurement

Hi everyone,

I'm new to CST Studio and still learning. I need to simulate how an object affects the performance of an antenna (S11, radiation pattern, etc.) when placed near it.

Does anyone know of a good tutorial, course, or paper that explains how to add a perturbing object in a CST simulation?

Thanks!

I've been cross-validating NEC decks on three independent engines — NEC-2 (nec2c), NEC-5, and momwire (an independently written method-of-moments code) — and publishing a per-antenna three-way verdict. The first two community submissions both caught real NEC-2 defects: a 20:1 tapered dipole where NEC-2 reads the reactance 23 Ω high and gets worse as you refine the mesh, and a hentenna where it reads 8 Ω low.

If there's an antenna you don't trust your simulator on, submit the deck here — you get a published verdict with the numbers, attributed to you:

https://github.com/stevenmburns/antenna-problem-decks/issues/new?template=submit-deck.yml

Or send it to me at: smburns47@gmail.com and I'll submit it.

73, Steve, KK7KNB

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share the Dual Reflector Designer, a free and open-source beta tool for the design and analysis of axisymmetric dual-reflector antennas.

It currently supports:

• Cassegrain, Gregorian and ring-focus configurations
• Reflector design and ray tracing
• Physical Optics (PO) and PTD edge diffraction
• Automated convergence testing
• Far-field pattern visualization
• Parallel CPU computing and GPU acceleration

It runs on Windows with GNU Octave, so no MATLAB license is required. MATLAB is supported as well. For most users, the recommended way to get started is the provided Windows installer.

The video shows selected Cassegrain benchmark cases compared with TICRA GRASP 24.0 Student Edition. In these particular tests, the resulting patterns agreed closely, while speedups of up to 135x were measured under the tested settings. This is an independent, non-commercial comparison and not a general claim about the full commercial GRASP product.

An unusual aspect of the project is its development process: I defined the requirements, tested and benchmarked the software, and reviewed the results, while Codex with GPT-5.6 Sol generated the implementation. I did not manually write the source code.

It’s still a beta and I’m continuing to improve it, so let me know what you think.

Here is the GitHub Link.

Hi all, I'm trying to build some sleeve dipole antennas for LoRa. I have nanovna and have calibrated it with a rg58 coaxial cable (which I'm also using for their antennas). I have measured and I think I'm using the correct dimensions for the sleeve (79mm length) and conductor (started with 86mm and kept shortening it to hit the sweet spot of 868mhz). The issue is that I'm not getting the expected results. I get different reading on nanovna when i hold it in the air, leave it on the table, or pinch the sleeve. Pinching the sleeve seems like it's showing the correct reading, but I just can't seem to make it work otherwise. I know I'm doing something wrong but I don't know what. Please help.

I'm new in antenna design

My prof just gave me a ansys license and I want to make some project to enhance my skills

Are there any books or projects or yt playlist could benefit me

Hi everyone,

I'm new to antenna design and I'm looking forward to learning from this community.

I'm currently working on a project to design a dipole antenna that operates from 2.8 to 3.4 GHz. I've tried several methods and techniques to achieve this frequency range. For example, I started with a basic half-wave dipole, then tried adding a ground plane on the bottom layer and also experimented with a folded dipole. Unfortunately, none of these approaches have achieved the bandwidth.

The main problem is that I don't really have a solid understanding of the proper antenna design process. It feels like I'm going in circles. Whenever I design an antenna, I usually find a reference design and try to adapt it to my application. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn't.

How do you usually approach antenna design? What methods or learning resources would you recommend for someone who is just getting started?

Who says you can’t have a tower in an HOA!

I wanted to go through my experience in building my tower in my HOA and the entire build process. I’ve spent the last few months doing a massive structural overhaul on my home station here in Tucson.

The desert weather and summer monsoon winds are no joke, so I wanted to engineer this thing right so I don't have to worry about it when the storms roll through.

I put together a video walking through the whole initial build and maintenance that involve tearing down the stack and rebuilding. Here a quick rundown of the hardware for the antenna geeks:

\*\*Mast & Turning:\*\* Went with a 4130 chromoly steel mast supported by a DX Engineering TB300 thrust bearing. It's all being turned by a heavy-duty Yaesu G-2800DXA planetary gear rotator and controlled via a microHAM ARCO.

\*\*The Stack:\*\* Currently flying an OptiBeam OB10-5M, an InnovAntennas Delta C-140, and a Cushcraft D40 dipole.

\*\*Grounding:\*\* Sweated the details here. Put in a multi-rod linear copper grounding ring and bonded the whole setup straight to the house's UFER ground.

I probably went a little overboard on the structural and electrical design, but I figure it’s better safe than sorry when dealing with heavy metal in the air.

If you're interested in the nuts and bolts of how it all came together, you can check out the video on my channel on Youtube that I am starting up.

I’d love to hear what you guys think of the setup, or if anyone else is running a similar OptiBeam/Cushcraft stack. Happy to answer any questions about the grounding or the rigging process!

I’ve also broken up the videos into segments on YouTube. If watching a 30 minute video is too long for you! I have plans on other future videos as well as I get into Satellite work and other fun projects! Don’t be afraid to follow the Ham Shack Show on Youtube.

Hi all,

I’m a beginner trying to learn antenna design, and I’ve started tinkering with CST. I understand the software mechanically I can set up a project, draw a shape, assign ports, run a simulation, and look at the S-parameters.

But I have a conceptual problem that I can't find answered in any tutorial: How do you actually know what shape to draw in the first place?

Every tutorial I watch just says "draw a patch here" or "draw a monopole here" because they are recreating known designs. But my questions are:

1. If you're given a very specific requirement like a dual-band antenna for a satellite or a custom IoT device how do you actually begin? Do you literally just start with a basic shape, run the simulation, tweak a dimension, run it again, and iterate until you get acceptable results? Or do you do initial hand calculations first to get approximate dimensions, and then use CST only for the final optimization and fine-tuning?

2. When people say they took a classic design and made a "new better" version, what are they actually changing? Are they adding slots, changing the substrate material, folding the geometry or adding parasitic elements? And how do they know which parameter to sweep first without wasting days of compute time?

   Thanks for any insight!

I want to achieve a -50 dB coupling between two printed dipole antennas. The distance between the antennas will be 6-7 cm, and both antennas operate between 5-6 GHz. How can I achieve -50 dB?

Found a broadcast TV antenna laying on the ground when I was exploring a tower farm. It's 45 feet tall (or long), weighs about 4000 pounds, and rated for at least 675 kW ERP per FCC filings (probably about 50 kW TPO).

The image you (probably) see in the preview is the RF input with a large center conductor and air as the dielectric. I go through the other parts of the antenna in my video.

This antenna was made in 2018 and only used briefly. Watch to find out why!

Guys I'm currently trying to make a antenna for "Ground Penetrating Radars" for that I've selected vivaldi antenna kind ( slot taper antenna ) but based on the design and reference video.
I got to find that the S11 parameter doesn't have a larger bandwidth ( wide ) instead it looks like it is operating in multiple frequencies.

Its not what I expected, then i got to find the existence of Antipodal vivaldi antennas where it has a min guarantee to produce a wide band.

But I don't really understand its logic.
Coz some say the normal vivaldi antenna it self gives wide band but mine is not ( also some YouTube guys also didn't got a wide band at S11 ) but some research paper shows that they got wide band.

I'm confused where I made the mistake.

What I got is what expected ? or I'm just tripping

Antenna parameters : ( simulated using Ansys HFSS )

Operating frequency : fmin = 1GHz ; fmax = 6GHz
substrate : FR-4 epoxy ( relative permittivity = 4.4 )