SignalsEverywhere: Testing Wideband PCB Antennas from Hex and Flex

In the past we've posted twice about Hex and Flex who has been designing and selling various types of wideband PCB antennas. Previously we saw his wide band vivaldi antenna, and his wideband 400/800 MHz+ spiral antennas.

Now on the latest episode of SignalsEverywhere host Corrosive gives us a brief review of the Hex and Flex antennas, and goes on to demonstrate the spiral antenna in action. In his tests he was able to receive Inmarsat AERO, 433 MHz tire pressure monitors (TPMS), 300 MHz APRS signals, 300 MHz SATCOM, 800 MHz P25 and 1090 MHz ADS-B aircraft tracking signals with the spiral antenna and our RTL-SDR Blog Wideband LNA.

The video also comes with a 20% off promotion code for the Hex and Flex Tindie store. Simply enter the code "signalseverywhere" at checkout.

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Roy

I think APRS is at 144.39 MHz, no?

HexAndFlex

The antenna does work a bit at 144MHz. I measure the VSWR to be less than 3:1. But its certainly not a nicely controlled circular polarisation. And it’s not properly isolated from the cable either.

michael

Looks good, could you do a bit bigger one and it might be able to rx NOAA satellites?

HexAndFlex

That would be about 65cm diameter. The PCB style manufacture isn’t really an option at that size.

WacKEDmaN

his vivaldi antennas start at 800Mhz and the spirals start at 300Mhz… thats a long way from 10Mhz!

SignalsEverywhere

You’d need a pretty BIG antenna to get even close to 10mhz with PCB

RS

I think he means a typo in the article.

“Previously we saw his wide band 10 MHz to 3.5 GHz vivaldi antenna” they’ve quoted the LimeSDR Mini’s frequency range rather than 800MHz to 6GHz+ of the antenna.

Betrayal by the clipboard I’m guessing!