5.8ghz micro cloverleaf bending jig

thingiverse

Human: I use a 1/4 wavelength 5.8ghz cloverleaf bending jig. This enables me to create an LHCP or RHCP cloverleaf antenna for 5.8ghz that's small enough to fit inside a tiny whoop canopy, keeping it safe during crashes while still being well under 1 gram and giving all the benefits of circular polarization. ###How is this 1/4 wavelength and what does that mean? For the full explanation, see the antenna theory website linked below. However, basically, an active element of an antenna ideally should be the same length as a wave of a signal. (Speed of light/5.8ghz = 51mm) 51mm is really long though, and a 1/4 of that works nearly as well so... we typically have a ~13mm antenna if it's something like a linear whip antenna. As for cloverleaf antennas, they're usually not called by a fractional wavelength name. The radius of the leaf is 1/4 wavelength though, and the lobe is 1/2 wavelength making the entire active element piece ~1 wavelength... so I'm going with the lobe which on a normal cloverleaf antenna is 1/2 wavelength and with this antenna it's 1/4. Until I know better, that's what I'm going to call it. ###Does this actually work? I don't have an SWR meter but... First, my testing (see my range testing video) says it works. (Test Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPrxrfwc2w ) Second, a poorly tuned antenna doesn't radiate and reflects the energy from the VTX back at the VTX that has to be dissipated as heat. After flying a full pack around my house, I used an infrared thermometer to measure the temp of my VTX while it was still plugged in and it was showing 94F.... which is lower than body temp, and quite cool for your typical VTX. So... I'm going to say it works, but it's up to you to do your own testing. I'd suggest plugging in your current antenna and letting your VTX heat up on your bench for a few minutes. See how hot it gets. Then after putting this antenna, try that again. If it's cooler, great! If it starts to get really hot (like too hot to touch) don't use it (and check your measurements) A coworker with a friend with a network analyzer has offered to measure these. When that happens I'll update the details here. #Assembling the antenna See RCModelReviews Youtube video as it builds the exact same antenna, just a larger version. Video: https://youtu.be/yohKRzMAJAg ###Wire: .5mm copper wire. I stripped this out of CAT5 cable I had laying around. Note some cat5 is stranded, so if you don't have solid core laying around, buy 24awg sold core wire. I think you can get it by the foot at a local hardware store. #Why would I want to do this? Circular polarized antennas reduce issues with multipathing. This is when your signal bounces off something and your receiver picks up the primary signal and the reflection slightly delayed. By using a circular polarized antenna, say RCHP, the reflection will be left polarized and an RHCP antenna will be far less likely to pick it up. If you want to learn more, check out http://www.antenna-theory.com/ Another reason you would want to do this is if you're organizing/participating in Tiny Whoop races. Traditionally only 4 pilots can fly at the same time, however, there are channel setups that can support up to 6 pilots flying at the same time if people are on the correct channels and also correctly using RHCP vs LHCP.