WiFi/HAM Radio Antenna

Summary

I have created custom antennas before, including Yagi-Udas and helicals. However, I recently came across the biquad yagi design and it looks be an amazingly powerful design with a small footprint. It’s just amazing! I want to build one biquad yagi to be used as a WiFi antenna and another to see if it can be used for amateur radio. Also, this grant opportunity excites me because I’ve ALWAYS wanted a VNA (vitual network analyzer) to analyze my antennas and find how to make them more efficient. However, as a broke high school hobbyist, I’ve never been able to justify even the $100 cost of even a low end VNA. I’m also excited to share my progress and design process when creating a new antenna!

Plan

1. I’ve already CADed a 9 element biquad yagi design using Fusion 360 and uploaded it to printables here: https://www.printables.com/model/358225-24-ghz-biquad-yagi-wifi-antenna.

2. I’ll 3D print parts out of PLA using my baby aka the best combined birthday+Chirstmas gift ever, my Ender 3 Pro.

3. Then, through a great amount of pain, I’ll somehow bend 9 biquad elements out of gauge 14 copper wire. I made a 5 element biquad yagi during winter break as a proof-of-concept and bending those biquads precisely was HARD.

4. I’ll super glue the copper wire into the guides and cover the reflector with copper tape. (Copper is very good for antennas due to its high conductivity).

5. I’ll prep the RG402 coax and the driven element of the antenna and solder them together.

6. I’ll use the NanoVNA to measure the VSWR (antenna efficiency basically, VSWR = 1 is ideal) and impedence (I’m not sure how to describe it but for WiFi it needs to be around 50 ohms) and resonant frequency to help me iterate upon the design to improve it.

7. Back to step 1 unless it’s already perfect (very unlikely)

Budget