John:
 
So why not a full-wave loop at 100mm high? Indeed it might not be like your station antenna, but we are not asking a huge amount from that antenna. I am quite concerned for the potential s/c envelop. There are other possibilities such as the side-mounted antennas such as for P3E (AO-13-type), although sweeping shadow patterns will cross the solar panels, such momentary interruptions of cell strings has not yet been evaluated. Could it be acceptable? I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that I feel we must be perhaps a little less conventional on the solution for Eagle.
 
Dick Jansson
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[email protected]
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-----Original Message-----
From: John B. Stephensen [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, 25 September, 2006 1944
To: Dick Jansson-rr; AMSAT Eagle
Subject: Re: [eagle] Antenna Plans

The U antenna can be anything that gives a 120-degree beamwidth and can be centered on the spin axis. There's no way to correct spin modulation on that band and the 30-50 bps uplinks will be more sensitive to phase pertubations than any other uplink. I'm assumng that there will be no class 1 uplinks on the L receiver. The advantage that I see in the crossed dipoles is that they leave more space for the S2 phased array.
 
The V antenna is the most problematic. I modelled the 3 dipole array (ends bent down to make each 600 mm long) six weeks ago and the main problem will be getting the antenna high enough off the satellite body to broaden the beam. I modelled a full-wavength loop today and it is almost the same. The 0.2h/0.5h/0.75h in the file names is the antenna height in meters. 
 
73,
 
John
KD6OZH
----- Original Message -----
From: Dick Jansson-rr
To: AMSAT Eagle
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 13:35 UTC
Subject: [eagle] Antenna Plans

It is well that the antenna plans are starting to congeal. I do have some comments upon the diagram that John presented, herewith attached.
 
1) There is an option, whether employed or not, that the U band could be the stacked CP patch design previously shown, with the L band array mounted thereon, also as previously shown.
 
2) The U band antenna currently shown in John's design could use a modification of the dipole design used for all of the AMSAT-DL P3 satellites. We call that "design adaptation" (not stealing!).
 
3) The V band antennas are of a great concern as shown in John's design. The P3D V antennas were more than 880mm end-to-end span, and a nominal 144mm spaced off of the spaceframe. Three of these on top of the Eagle seems to me to be of a gargantuan, unwieldy concept. These antennas would greatly impact the spacecraft envelop as mounting in a launcher. John has talked of a bent-end antenna design, is that really practical from an RF sense?
 
I am wondering if some form of dual-feed full-wave V band loop might not serve better in this application. Stan Wood had shown such a full-wave loop design for the Small Eagle that was only about 50mm high. Properly designed, it would not necessarily have to be 144mm high, so I am led to believe. Can some astute antenna designer look at this for us? I feel that we need to look at the options.
 
Dick Jansson
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[email protected]
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