Scottish Elises

Dominic wrote:

fd wrote:

Dominic wrote:Slightly off topic, but still about transmitters and receivers...

We have a bit of a first world problem. The aerial for our remote control electric gates on our drive way is not ideally located, in as much as it works great from inside the gates, but less so from outside. The aerial is mounted on the inside of the wall and is shorter that the wall. It is mounted with the control unit for the gates so would not be too easy to relocate. It looks like an average car aerial, so I bought a longer car aerial, only to discover that the size of the thread to screw it in is slightly different. I have also tried some adapters, and other aerials for remote control cars. They are all the same type of screw in fixing, but non fit. The manufactures do not supply directly to the public. The local installers are either "too busy for months" or "don't supply that part".

Before I give up on it,.. I wondered if it is feasible to solder on an extension to the existing aerial???

TIA.

The length of the antenna is critical, making it arbitrarily longer (or shorter) will probably make it less efficient assuming the designer knew what length to make the antenna in the first place. It's to do with the frequency (and thus wavelength) of the radio waves being transmitted or received. There will be multiple 'good' lengths as 1 wavelength, 1/2, 1/4 wavelength antennas all work well . . .

You could exactly double it and hope they knew what they were doing. You could find out the frequency used - it's probably marked on the device by law, 4** MHz or 868 MHz would be common licence free frequencies. From that you can figure out the correct length.

Of course you could knock the wall down as that's what's causing the problem . . .

Cheers Fergus.

Steveweegie had a look at the weekend, seems like a sensible suggestion (other than wall demolition), is to re position the aerial mast higher up the wall using the manufactures extension kit. Or just get used to the idea of waiting a bit longer for the gates to open.

robin wrote:That must have been thrilling chat

Sanjøy wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 25, 2020 1:23 am

I listened to the Aberdeen coastguard giving the weather forecast earlier this evening when I left it scanning my preprogrammed marine frequencies. Not sure if it was off a repeater though.

campbell wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 26, 2020 11:17 pm

James finally got ours rolling today. Impressive sound.

Range only tested to 200m so far

Hope to try couple km later this week tho.