ADS-B: Build a simple ground plane Antenna

ADS-B: Build a simple ground plane Antenna

Materials:

  1.  solid copper wire (12, 14, 18 – whatever you have available!)
  2. SO-239 LINK
  3. Soldering Iron and solder
  4. Tape, Ruler, calipers or anything to measure a wire to a lenght of 75mm then finally the “snip length” of approximate resonance 67mm (technically the resonance is at 65.5mm… but from my experiments, 67mm does the trick!)

Let’s get started:

Steps:

  • Cut and strip 9 pieces of wire to about 75mm each
  • Take 8 of them and give them a “L” hook as seen in photo, the hook need not be more than a few mm (spider legs)
  • Take the remaining stripped copper wire and solider it to the SO-239 center, tin it first with a bit of solder!
  • Tin the “L” hook spider legs also, make sure the iron is hot
  • Attach the 4 legs to the holes in the SO-239 – then do the same for the remaining 4 legs. you will have to solder these flat to the SO-239
  • Take a ruler or caliper and mark each element to a length of about 67mm – and TRIM them all to the same length (about 67mm is good enough)
  • take the 8 “spider legs” and tilt them about 45 degrees or so – dose not have to be exactly 45 deg. – and you can fiddle with the angle for performance tweaks!
  • Just like that you have an antenna that works well with a piaware SDR dongle for ADS-B reception.

 

3 thoughts on “ADS-B: Build a simple ground plane Antenna

  1. Please tell us what the rubber – looking hood is constructed of that goes between the PL 259 and the plastic tubing

  2. Stuart via any J69 station
    We are trying to find out about Cyril Volney in Wesley.
    and Henry Volney in Belfast, if you can confirm they are well please.

    73’s M1SKI Andrzej

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