[Cu-wireless] omni test

[Zachary C. Miller]

So Dave and I finished building the discone and much to our dismay it
seems to cause a LOSS of about 5-8dB compared to just the plain card. 

We think there may still be _some_ hope. Any of the following issues
may be at play:

1) The dimensions of the disc and cone that I got from the website I
used were really suspiciously different from the dimensions suggested
by the ARRL antenna book. Luckily the one I built is too big so we can
maybe dremmel it down to the correct size.

2) There is an effect where if 2 antennas are close to each other they
change each other's impedance. We were testing with just the short
pigtails so maybe if we tested with a longer feedline the impedance
would be better matched. I doubt this is the case. 

3) The core of our feedline tube is pretty irregular and that may be
messing up the impedance. I don't know how we'd fix this but if we
could at least confirm that we have an impedance problem we could try
to do better with the next design.

4) It may be that if we use the much less rugged copper tinfoil design
(as opposed to my copper sheet metal design) that we can more closely
approximate a cone which will give us better performance at higher
frequencies.

It would help if we had a "slotted line" to test impedance and an SWR
meter and possibly a signal generator or any other random antenna
testing gear. I don't know much about that stuff yet. 

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology