Removing the Veil
Granted, during our advancement as Ham’s, we have done a lot of memorizing. Now that we are where we want to be, it would be great to try building our own antennas. We should work on understanding how to get it done. When calculating wire lengths (L) for building half-wave antennas, where does the number 468 come from in the formula; L=468/cf ? That 468 looks like magic until you unpack it. It’s actually just a bundle of physics + unit conversions + real-world antenna behavior. The starting point: wavelength A half-wave antenna is based on half the wavelength of the signal λ = c / f c = speed of light ≈ 299,792,458 m/s f = frequency (Hz) A half-wavelength is L = λ / 2 = c / 2f As this formula for calculating half-wavelength (L) sits, it is not very friendly. Hams like the formula in feet and MHz , not meters and Hz. Step 1: Convert speed of light to feet/second: c =~983,571,056 ft/s Step 2: Convert Hz to MHz: f(Hz...