8 Oct 2009

Ferrite rods as transmitting antennas?

Assuming one is running very low powers (milliwatts) and use (say) 10 ferrite rods "in parallel" for the core is there any reason why a single thick turn on a ferrite rod, suitably tuned and matched, would not make an effective transmitting loop antenna on the lower HF bands or 500kHz? As long as the core doesn't saturate I cannot think why this would not be feasible.

I have just been told about a Yahoo group for people experimenting with ferrite rods. The owner, John Popelish, experimented some time ago with stacked ferrite toroids to make a ferrite rod.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ferriterodantennaexperimenters/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Check out this design for an experimentally tested transmitting ferrite antenna for 160m and 80m. http://www.zs6wr.co.za/anode/AnodeSeptember2009.pdf

This might be the ultimate small-size qrp antenna for 160, 80, and 40, if it radiates efficiently enough.

I'd love to hear the results you try this. I think the ferrite rods will only work up to about 7 MHz. But above there normal magloops are pretty small anyway.