Antennas For Everyone

For several years the Electrical Engineering Technology program’s senior level co mmunications course has run an antenna contest where students must design and build their own antenna for reception of a specified UHF television channel. With modifications, the same contest has recently been used for an engineering freshmen orientation program and for Master’s students in Electrical Engineering. The contest has become a great success with both the seniors and graduate students who design their own antennas and with the freshmen that follow directions to construct and test the antenna. Low-cost building materials are provided for the freshmen. In addition, they are able to complete the contest in a few hours. In contrast, upper-class students purchase their own supplies and take a few weeks to complete the building, although testing for a class of ten to twenty can be completed in one hour. The contest is extremely versatile in terms of student level and equipment needed. For testing, the minimum equipment needed is a modified TV and voltmeter. For advanced testing, the equipment needed would be an expensive RF vector network analyzer and a spectrum analyzer. Freshmen students learn about the basic antenna parameters such as polarization and frequency of operation. The advanced students learn about efficiency, directivity and gain, and have time to study the practical concepts of creating a low loss match. Graduate students find the building and creative aspect of the contest quite different from many of their computationally intensive antenna assignments. Over the years, someone in the senior class has tried nearly every antenna type. Most students walk away with at least a working antenna they can use in their home.