The Forktenna is a very unique design. It is essentially a half sized Hentenna, and I saw reference to it
in the Hentenna article on page 11, ch 12 of The ARRL's Simple and Fun Antennas by K8CH and N6BV.
In 2003 I built one because if its novelty, plus I needed a repeater antenna for the
the basement. I wanted to monitor our local 146.97 repeater while building in the basement shop.
It worked well in that applicatiion. I hung it from a plastic pipe and had no problenm
using the repeater which was 2 miles distant, on 200mw!!!
Then two years ago I moved in from the country. As a
result, I had to whip up a 2M antenna. I'm in a river bottom now and
have a difficult time using our local repeater on an indoor quarter wave
whip. I can hit it with 10 watts ok, marginal at 5W, but in both cases the
ID'er comes back very scratchy.
So just for fun I grabbed a Forktenna and hung it from a curtain
rod about 5' off the floor in window facing toward the repeater, and hooked
it up using 20' of RG8X. Voila, easy hit on 5W. I'm solid into the
machine and receiving full quieting audio from the rptr. I can also hit the
Osky machine using 25W Its 25 mile away. It's ID'er lights up 3 bars on the S-meter. I think
this is 3 S units on the FT-1500M. It's pretty scratchy tho.
Out comes my full size copper pipe Hentenna - same mouinting and coax for
comparison. Osky is now full quieting and 3 S units stronger. And I can use
97 and 41 at 5W with full quieting, both receive and transmit.
If you'd like to investigate an unusual antenna that works well, the both the Forktenna and the Hentenna
are for you. The bottom picture has the dimensions for a copper pipe version. Right click and view image to increase
the size and the dimensions will be visible. Good luck and please let me know how it goes.
The next Hentenna related project may be a 3 or 4 element Beam. I think one would have
lotsa gain.
.
