Years ago, (probably the late ’90s) I played with EZNEC and haven’t really used it much… until today. I was trying to find information on reduced size yagis using meander techniques. There really wasn’t much out there, so I tried my own. Ignore the W8JK name – I guess I forgot to update the comments on my antenna.
Here is the file if you want to look at it or make tweaks:
My goal was to get something I could build in a 0.2 x 0.2 wavelength planar shape that had some directivity. It was pretty clear that to get good angles for DX it really needs to be at least 1/2 wavelength above ground.
The other thing I noticed using the meander style is the parasitic element goes from director to reflector REALLY FAST, so there wouldn’t be a lot of bandwidth available (maybe 250 kHz tops), and it would probably need to be tuned per location. There was also an impedance step when the parasitic element went from director to reflector (jumped from maybe 10 to 18 ohms). I guess there’s a reason people tend to use full size antennas, but it was a fun project!
It looks like I forgot to change the antenna name. Oops. If anyone is interested, here are the element lengths I used. As you can see, it is planar in the Z axis and confined to +/- 0.1 wavelength in the x and y axes.
I definitely encourage you to download and play with the EZNEC software. It may not exactly match reality, but it’ll give you a good feel for how sensitive certain parameters are, and the importance of selecting the right height for your antenna.
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