Help with Yagi-Uda antenna design and radiation pattern modelling

Hi,

For a university project I am build a ground station and am coming to the antenna part.

I want to pick up around ~430MHz and am looking around for ways to verify my designs. I found some online calculators but all seen to give different measurements.

I modelled it in ‘4nec2’ but the radiation pattern looks horrible and I’m not sure if the software has bugged out or the design sucks.

Does anyone have a specific ‘go to’ Yagi-Uda antenna design? Is it really as simple as some websites say of wavelength * 0.2 etc?

Modelling software recommendations
Yagi antenna design recommendations

I would love to update the SatNOGS wiki if I can verify an antenna design as there is currently no ‘homebrew’ Yagi.

Hi,
I’d say, start with known good designs. There’s a lot out there, for example DK7ZB and many more.
Try to stay with element width recommendations, these matter.
In the quick and pretty easy chapter you have the “tape measure yagi”, but do note that some of the quick and dirty ones omit things like choke on the coax or other details, but not all feeds need them.

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These are good, reproducible and cheap designs:

I used his 144 MHz design (described in his “Cheap Yagi Antennas” document) today when operating portable.

Glen

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Sorry for the late reply. Thank you both for the help!

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