January GARA Meting: Antenna Design with Roger Stout, N4RWS

I became fascinated with antennas in a UHF/ Microwave course many years before being licensed as KC4YLQ in 1991. (now N4RWS).  I’ve been privileged to work in areas that continued to pique my interest having spent nine years with Bell Labs.  While there I had the honor to work in a 60 man department which included Phillip Smith just prior to his retirement.  Needless to say I felt an obligation to learn to use his brainchild the Smith Chart.  Thank goodness for the tutorials which were in the back of the “old” RCA tube manuals, I read the examples till the pages fell out.  My last 40 years of employment was with Gilbarco here in Greensboro. While there I helped develop antennas for RFID and was involved in frequencies from 136KHz and into the Giga Hertz range.
For my program I’m bringing some antennas I’ve built over the years either to actually use or simply modeled to satisfy  a curiosity.  I hope to provide some comments about a few designs that might help others avoid a few pitfalls and get them to a design that works best for them.

Roger Stout  –  N4RWS