Building a Wideband Helix Antenna for L/S/C Bands

Over on YouTube user Adam Alicajic (creator of the popular LNA4ALL low noise amplifier) has uploaded a video showing the performance of a home made wideband helix antenna that he has created for receiving signals such as ones from L-Band Inmarsat satellites. See our tutorial for more information on receiving Inmarsat signals.

Adams helix antenna is built out of an old used can and is based on a 1.1 turn design. In the first of three videos he shows that the SWR of the antenna is all well below 2.0 from 1.5 GHz to 3 GHz. In the second video Adam shows the performance of the helix antenna on actual L-band signals being received with an RTL-SDR dongle. In the final video Adam compares the helix again a patch antenna and finds that the two receive with very similar performance.