On 06/05/20 14:19, Mike Diehl via AMSAT-BB wrote:

Trying to grasp how these would be especially advantageous to portable satellite ops. Actually, I’m trying to grasp how omni antennas would be advantageous for satellite ops in any form outside of telemetry collection where you don’t want to have additional wear on a rotor you use for making contacts.

Easier to set up for the newbie, who may not want to put up a rotator right off the bat. Sure, performance suffers without directional gain, but life is a series of tradeoffs.

I have two 2m antennas which aren't movable and have little/no directional gain (copper pipe J-pole and copper pipe folded horizontal dipole). Both can easily hear the FM and linear sats, even after 50' of RG-8X.

However, based on the elevation plot, I'm not too sure that this antenna would be useful. They have gain below the horizon that would better be used above 0 degrees. Hard to hear a satellite through miles and miles of dirt. :-)

Or, perhaps I'm interpreting Figure 1 wrong on [1].

--- Zach N0ZGO

[1] http://www.ve3byt.com/SkewPlanarAntenna/