antenna

Rescheduled! DARC Lecture and Lab for October 2025

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A 435-MHz yagi antenna, made from aluminum wire and pvc pipe, sits on a dark red backbround.

The DARC Lecture and Lab for September 2025 has been RESCHEDULED! The event will take place on October 25th, 2025.

You can download the lab notes here and the original “cheap yagi” paper here.

Please join us for the October, 2025 Lecture and Lab. Tony Mendina, NT5TM, will introduce the famous “cheap yagi” series of antennas, and participants will built a 435-MHz yagi antenna suitable for AMSAT or fox-hunting use. Thanks to donations of valuable materials by Virginia, NV5F, and Rollin, WA5RFG, the kit cost will be only $10.00. Remember that you don’t need to be a DARC member to attend our event. We’ll meet up at our usual meeting location at 10:00 AM on Saturday, October 25th. Please watch this post for more updates about tools and instructions.

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DARC Lecture And Lab March 2024

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2M Fox Hunting Yagi Antenna Build

Join the DARC for Lecture and Lab March 23, 2024 from 10am until 2pm. Attendees will be building an inexpensive 2M yagi beam antenna using 1″ tape measure sections for antenna elements and a three foot length of 1/2″ PVC pipe. This antenna is suitable for HAM radio fox hunting and other radio direction finding activities in the 2 meter HAM band.  You can purchase the antenna kit on site, cost of the kit is $15.00.  Builders with their tools will need to come to the Dallas Medical Center March 23, 2024 from 10:00 am – 2 pm ish to purchase, assemble and test their antenna. First come first served and as always this event is open to anybody licensed or not, and you do not need to be a member of the DARC to attend.

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Lecture And Lab October 2022

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Come join the DARC for October 2022 Lecture and Lab – you will build a vertical J-Pole Antenna for 146 and 455 MHz. Rollin Gary WA5RFG will be leading this build. This will be a fun in-person outdoor event at TW Richardson Grove Pavilion in Irving just off Interstate 635 and part of the Tech-Net in the park later that afternoon. Plan on attending in-person Oct 22, 2022 start time is 10am central time for the antenna build. Details below

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Lecture and Lab, August 2022

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The QFH Antenna, courtesy of Eugene Ruperto, W3KH

The latest revision of the instruction sheet and information guide is now available. I’ve also added some information about on-line resources.

The August, 2022, Lecture and Lab will be held in-person at the Dallas Medical Center on Saturday, August 27th, at 10:00 am. We’ll have an antenna build and a presentation, too. The antenna we build will be a 137-MHz helicoidal loop antenna pair for receiving weather satellite images and aircraft radio voice transmissions. The presentation will discuss the best software tools for decoding satellite imagery for yourself. The antenna will be very easy to build, and the cost will be only $30.00. 20 kits will be available!

You’ll need to bring a soldering iron and some general hand tools such as a tape measure, a sharpie, and your favorite set of files. The club will provide the antenna parts, but not the receiver: you’ll want to have a device that can receive signals at about 137 MHz. Most ham radios can’t do that, so now’s the time to check on your scanner or even order an RTL-SDR dongle or one of its competitors like an Airspy or SDR-Play. You’ll also want an adapter from a PL-259 connector to whatever connector your receiver uses.

I hope to see you there!

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Completed! Repeater Maintenance 146.880

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New DB224 Antenna For 146.880 W5FC

The planned repeater maintenance on the DARC W5FC 146.880mhz repeater was completed ahead of schedule on March 20, 2022. Work was finished by 11am and the repeater is back on the air and 100% operational. The new Tesco DB224 antenna and coax should resolve all the scratch and noise on the repeater. Big thanks to all that helped to make this a success. Questions of comments hit us up on the contact form and let us know how it sounds and works. More photos from the install gallery here.

DARC Lecture and Lab August 2021

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These are the easy-to-build cores of the 1:1 balun and 1:49 transformer you’ll be assembling.

Join the DARC for Lecture and Lab August 28th, 2021 from 11am until 2 pm Central Time virtually via Google Meet. (The virtual meeting ID/Link is always on the W5FC event calendar) You will get to build two easy kits: a 1:1 choke balun and a 49:1 impedance transformer. Both will be enclosed in waterproof PVC enclosures and neither kit will require precision soldering. The balun will be constructed to hang below the center of your dipole, and the transformer will be set up for use at one end of an end-fed half-wave antenna. To pick up your kit, you will need to come to the front parking lot of the Dallas Medical Center on August 21st, 2021 from 10:30 – 11:30 to pick up your kit from the Dallas Medical Center parking lot from Tony, NT5TM.

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The “New Carolina Windom”

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Simplified diagram of a New Carolina Windom AntennaN. T. “Len” Carlson, K4IWL was a long-time DARC member before he retired to Florida, and his article about his favorite multi-band antenna was a popular page on our old website. I’ve looked in the club archives and found his paper for your reading—and on-air—pleasure.

Multi-band antennas can be very tricky to build and tune, but if you put in the effort required to adjust them, you can have a lot of fun.

Have a look at his article here.