Ham Radio Antennas in Practice
Practical Antennas, Transmission Lines, and Propagation for Stealth and Receiving StationsBy Walter Brannigan
Length15h 11m
About this audiobook
The antenna decides your station, and most of the choices are made on a small lot with a limited budget.
This book takes that reality seriously. You learn to read a gain figure without being fooled by it, calculate real feedline loss, and see exactly where a tuner hides loss instead of removing it. From there, you build: dipoles and fans, verticals with radial systems that work, loops, Yagis and phased arrays, and a full chapter of stealth antennas for restricted properties. Receiving antennas get their own treatment, because hearing is half the contact.
Propagation, station grounding and lightning protection, portable and VHF work, and analyser and VNA measurement complete the book. Every chapter connects theory to what you can measure, build, and repair at home. Written for licensed amateurs, new hams and anyone building antennas that must survive weather and neighbours.
What you will learn:
• Antenna fundamentals: fields, waves, gain, patterns, and how to read specifications without being misled
• Transmission lines and impedance matching: real feedline loss, tuner behaviour, and matching networks that work
• Dipoles and their variants, including fan and multi-band configurations
• Vertical antennas and ground systems, with radial systems that actually perform
• Loop antennas, Yagis, and directional phased arrays for practical gain and directivity
• Stealth and restricted-space antennas for small lots, HOAs, and neighbour-sensitive installations
• Receiving antennas and low-noise listening techniques, because hearing is half the contact
• Propagation, feedline routing, station grounding, and lightning protection
• VHF, UHF, portable operating, measurement with analysers and VNAs, plus modelling and building
This book is for licensed amateurs, new hams, and anyone building antennas that must survive weather and neighbours. If you want fewer guesses and more contacts, it belongs on your bench.
Audiobook details
GenreTechnology
Length15 hrs 11 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateSep 27, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Ham Radio Antennas in Practice
2Foreword
3Preface
4About This Book
5Chapter 1: Fields, Waves and Antenna Fundamentals
Show all chaptersShow less
61.1 How Radiated Fields Begin
71.2 Polarisation and Why It Matters
81.3 Reciprocity and What It Buys You
91.4 Current Distribution on a Wire
101.5 Fields, Waves and Antenna Fundamentals in Practice
11Chapter 2: Reading Antenna Specifications
122.1 Gain, Directivity and the Reference Antenna
132.2 Beamwidth, Front-to-Back and Front-to-Side
142.3 Takeoff Angle and the Pattern Plot
152.4 Reading the Fine Print
162.5 Comparing Two Antennas Fairly
17Chapter 3: Transmission Lines
183.1 Characteristic Impedance and Velocity Factor
193.2 Loss per Hundred Feet and Total Loss
203.3 Standing Waves and Mismatch Loss
213.4 Choosing and Installing Feedline
223.5 Measuring Your Own Line
23Chapter 4: Impedance Matching
244.1 Why Matching Matters and Where Loss Hides
254.2 Gamma and Hairpin Matches
264.3 Baluns and Ununs
274.4 L-Networks and Tuner Types
284.5 Matching Shortened and Off-Resonance Antennas
29Chapter 5: Dipoles and Their Variants
305.1 The Half-Wave Dipole
315.2 Height Above Ground and Inverted V Configurations
325.3 The Doublet and Multiband Fed Dipoles
335.4 Fan and Trapped Dipoles
345.5 Linear Loading and Shortened Dipoles
35Chapter 6: Vertical Antennas and Ground Systems
366.1 The Quarter-Wave Vertical and Its Ground Plane
376.2 Radial Fields and Ground Loss
386.3 Elevated Counterpoises and Ground Screens
396.4 Shortened and Loaded Verticals
406.5 Vertical Performance in Practice
41Chapter 7: Loop Antennas
427.1 Small Transmitting Loops
437.2 Full-Wave Loops, Deltas and Quads
447.3 Loop Noise Behavior and Orientation
457.4 Building and Tuning a Loop
46Chapter 8: Yagis and Directional Arrays
478.1 Yagi Elements and Their Jobs
488.2 Boom Length, Gain and Bandwidth
498.3 Stacking and Phased Vertical Arrays
508.4 Feeding and Tuning a Yagi
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